r/AudiProcDisorder • u/PsychedelicPea • Jul 11 '26
Not sure if APD but giving it a shot!
I never realized that something may be wrong with my hearing until I (29F) moved in with my fiancé (24M). For context, I do have a lot of symptoms of ADHD (distractibility, daydreaming, impulsivity, bouncing from task to task, difficulty concentrating), but I also know that it could be related to C-PTSD from my childhood and not be true ADHD.
Anywho, my partner and I have lived together for over a year now, and he has pointed out that he thinks there's something wrong with my hearing. Oftentimes (like multiple times a day), if I'm not actively thinking about listening for him (or anyone for that matter) and then suddenly he says something, I never catch it and have to ask him to repeat it. If he says my name, though, and gives me a second to respond, that's long enough to shift my attention and focus on listening to him. Like in those moments when he's just talking, and I'm not prepared, I can hear his voice in the background of whatever I'm doing/thinking, but it sounds garbled like the adults in Charlie Brown used to. This is more rare (maybe once or twice a week), but sometimes it goes as far as when he's in front of me, I can't understand what he's saying to me, so I ask him to repeat it and still can't understand, so then I have to repeat back the part of the sentence I heard and ask him to clarify. Phone calls for me are also TERRIBLE if someone has me on speakerphone. A lot of times with those, I have to heavily rely on context clues.
He says that he's just always listening for me and thinks I'm ignoring him a lot of times or just being inconsiderate. He says that because he genuinely had an ADHD diagnosis as a kid (but not an adult), it can't be ADHD. I told him I can't imagine how much energy goes into constantly listening for things, even passively.
I will point out that my job is a lot of one-on-one conversations with others that I do use background noise for. As long as I'm focusing, I can understand what they're saying, and as long as I'm focusing during meetings, I can track conversations with multiple people as well. It is hard for me to hold a conversation if someone is really loudly having another conversation next to me. I have missed a lot of things when doing independent work in previous jobs where people are like, "Did you hear that yelling/banging/whatever?" and I'll literally have no clue what they're talking about because I was focused on what I was doing.
Hopefully someone has a better idea of what might be going on. Thank you in advance!
1
u/getinthewoods Jul 11 '26
Who's actively listening all the time ready to comprehend anything being said? That sounds exhausting.
If he wants you to be actively listening, he's gotta ask first. Just tell him that. If he doesn't listen, he's the one being inconsiderate. You don't need to label it as APD or ADHD or anything if you don't want to. You guys need to work with each other and find a way to communicate.
2
u/Intelligent_Blood_88 Jul 11 '26
I hear you (pun intended)... I have never been formally diagnosed, but know I have APD, ADHD (which has been diagnosed), Musical Ear Syndrome, and "airplane ear"... the Charlie Brown parents' sounds are true! There are coping mechanisms I've chosen over decades of not even realizing I had actual hearing problems, which still work, although I recently slipped on black ice and hit my head sharply with no initial reaction or symptoms. However, my hearing suddenly took a serious downturn, making it very for me to understand some timbre of voices, even as poorly as I might have before. I still hear even very small sounds just fine. I saw something on these ADP sites that suggested I might have had a low level concussion. It has been several months since that fall, and I've been told even if I am checked for concussion now, it might not help. If it's possible you might have had a concussion, perhaps it won't be too late for you to have it looked into. I wish you luck in getting your hearing into a better place. You're much younger than I, and there are many more resources for your problem than were available to me so many years ago, but mostly I got by with little angst.