u/Maeshara

[Translated and summarized by ChatGPT for clarity]

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping someone here has had a similar experience because I'm running out of explanations.

I'm 30 years old and have had severe hearing loss since childhood (probably congenital). I wore hearing aids for years and, until my early 20s, I had a normal social life with few communication problems.

Over the years, though, I've found it increasingly difficult to follow conversations in noisy environments or groups, even though repeated hearing tests have shown little to no decline in my hearing. During COVID, I received a cochlear implant because masks made communication impossible at work (I was working in a hospital). It significantly improved my hearing overall, but I still struggle badly in noisy or group settings, and it feels like it's getting worse every year.

I've brought this up with my audiologists several times. My speech-in-noise test results are actually excellent and don't match my real-life experience. They even replaced my implant in case it was a technical issue, but nothing changed. Objectively, my hearing isn't much different from when I was in high school, when I didn't have these problems.

A few possible explanations I've considered:

• I was diagnosed with ADHD and wonder whether attention plays a role.
• A psychiatrist also suspected autism, although I never pursued a formal diagnosis. That could explain noise sensitivity, social overload, and the cognitive effort required to communicate.
• Oddly, I've noticed that LSD temporarily made it much easier for me to understand speech, and I also think my hearing felt better while I was taking antidepressants. This makes me wonder whether anxiety and cognitive processing, rather than hearing itself, are part of the problem.

Has anyone experienced something similar or found an explanation? I'm especially interested in whether this could be related to auditory processing, ADHD, autism, anxiety, or something else.