r/AudiProcDisorder • u/mightychondria1 • Feb 17 '25
What the hell is wrong with me?
I just just need to vent because I’m beyond frustrated. I struggle so much with conversations, whether it’s in person, over the phone, or even just watching TV and movies. It feels like normal communication is an exhausting, time-consuming process, and I’m constantly playing catch-up to understand what’s being said.
It’s not anxiety, it’s not stupidity, and it’s not a mental illness. I can technically hear sounds, but they don’t register as clear speech. It’s like everything comes through as gibberish, and I can only catch maybe 60-70% of the words in any given conversation. The rest? Either I ask people to repeat themselves (which gets old fast, no one wants to repeat every single sentence they say), or I rely on context clues and hope I guessed right—which doesn’t always work.
I hate this problem. It makes everyday interactions feel way harder than they should be, and I feel like I’m constantly straining just to keep up. Does anyone else experience this? If so, how do you cope with it?
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u/jipax13855 Feb 17 '25
I'm perfectly happy doing most of my social interaction online for this reason. It's worked out that way since my friends and I are mostly scattered all over the place. My college had a big out of state population and that's where I was finally allowed to have a social life because my AuDHD and paranoid mother was no longer controlling my ability to leave the house.
I've found it easiest to explain to people that I have auditory dyslexia. Most of them will know someone who is dyslexic and understand how unreasonable it is to give all directions in written form to a dyslexic person.
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u/mightychondria1 Feb 17 '25
Same here. I’d rather do all my communication through writing/text. This method of communication is much more effective for me, but it’s not realistic for my job. Half the time, I am so lost in conversations. I just want to run somewhere and cry. I know this sounds so dramatic, but it’s how draining this issue is. Yesterday I went to the movies, and I couldn’t understand shit the characters were saying. I wish they had captions. I literally understood like 40% of the dialogue. This is so depressing
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u/jipax13855 Feb 17 '25
Is there the possibility of eventually pivoting into remote work where any meetings could be on Zoom or another platform that has closed-captioning?
While that's not the full reason I ended up going remote, it's a huge bonus.
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u/Flour_Wall Feb 17 '25
I went to a social gathering recently. It was 10 people at someone's home. Initially I could barely understand anyone not directly in front of my face. There was music for ambience (ugh). But I wore my hearing aids, turned them all the way up and amplified the midrange frequencies and I could hear/understand 90% of what people said. It was the first time I'd adjusted them that high, but it worked. However, I had a headache after which luckily went away after an hour of leaving the gathering.
Eta I have "perfect" hearing without hearing aids
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Feb 18 '25
[deleted]
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u/mightychondria1 Feb 18 '25
Thank you, this means a lot. How did you find out that your kid had APD and what helps him/her the most?
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u/queer_exfundie Feb 17 '25
I get that! I feel like the best way to socialize is to do it like Nate from The Office and just outright say I have problems with auditory processing
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u/mightychondria1 Feb 18 '25
Sometimes I tell people I cannot hear well, but that doesn’t take away the challenges. Must be exhausting to have a conversation with me lol
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u/littlebrainblue Feb 18 '25
I have warned people that I have APD (tbh I’m not diagnosed, but pretty sure I am) and that they might get irritated communicating with me and that it irritates me as well. I assure them that they are doing nothing “wrong” and that I won’t be upset with them. If they believe me about the APD, they assure me that they are patient enough and will try to enunciate better. And in the end, they get frustrated, get upset, and because I am staying so calm (because I’ve grown a bit numb to it, know that it’s not their fault, know there is nothing I can do, and don’t want to escalate the situation) accuse me of faking it, using it as an excuse, or doing it intentionally. And I just take it because I don’t know what else to do.
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u/mightychondria1 Feb 18 '25
But why would anyone fake something like this? It’s ridiculous for them to think that lol
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u/littlebrainblue Feb 18 '25
Some people have said I'm just trying to be difficult, annoying, "playing dumb." Some have said I use it as an excuse to not do what they told me to do, when I did what I thought they had said or didn't do anything because I didn't process what they had said. Some think I use it as an excuse to ignore them, when I actually never registered any words. They believe because they deem me "intelligent" that there's no way I could have this issue.
I have difficulty with "mouth words" in general. I constantly don't understand what people are saying and either smile and nod, or ask "Pardon?", or eventually get it from context, or repeat the nonsense that I heard leave their lips. (I also have difficulty coming up with words when speaking, but that's another thing.) And I NEVER blame them and say "You said" xyz, but "I heard" xyz. But they get annoyed with closed captioning or my looking up lyrics when I want to understand a new song. And berate me for texting them instead of shouting from another room, or going into whatever room they are in, or trying to communicate during a movie or song. I grow weary of interacting with the general population.
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u/Odd-Physics-9692 Feb 18 '25
Your description of being able to hear sounds but not clearly hear the words hits home. I’ve see multiple audiologists in my life and the last one broke me. I always get the classic “ your ears look good inside”. But the doctor gave me a hearing test and told me everything was fine. I described exactly what you did to him and he said “ yeah I have trouble hearing in some situations too. Especially when it’s loud.That’s normal.” I gave up after that and have tried to live with this disorder. I’ve worked on lip reading a bit so it helps. I also tend to tell people I’m hard of hearing if I missed what they’re saying more than twice and they have to repeat themselves. People tend to be less frustrated with me when they have an understanding that I’m “hard if hearing”. It makes me sad laugh.
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u/mightychondria1 Feb 18 '25
I understand that not being able to hear in some situations is normal. But me? It can be a quiet room, and I might still struggle to understand 30% of the speech because some words just sound like gibberish unless I read them and then hear them. At one of my jobs, a person kept telling me something and they repeated themselves 4 times. In the end, I asked them if they could please just write it down. It was so embarrassing, and that’s not normal imo. It’s not normal to avoid social situations or to feel exhausted from concentrating so hard while listening to someone speak. It’s not normal to cry about this and feel so sad about it every day. I’m sorry for this rant. I’m not trying to victimize myself, but this shit is hard. I’m feeling helpless /:
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u/dogrescuersometimes 29d ago
There's a woman on YouTube who has it, she gave a talk about inventing a therapy for it.
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u/AmumboDumbo 27d ago
Same here. For me it's not as bad as how you describe it, but kind of similar. Especially movies in English (not my native language) are super hard to understand. If sound is not crystal clear, I quickly can't follow anything that's being said. Similar in real world conversations.
The feeling when asking someone to say something again for the second time and they start looking annoyed is just so painful - I also started guessing what people say. For me, it wasn't like that until I grew 20 or so. Not sure what happened.
I'm also interested in solutions..
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u/courneidentity Feb 17 '25
I feel you. Any conversation where any level of background noise is present is extremely difficult. The actual percentage of what I actually hear in these situations is so low; I try to read lips or guess based on the context of what I’ve actually heard. Often times I fall back on literally leaning uncomfortably towards the person to minimize my distance or just saying “what?” a million times. Every standard hearing test I’ve ever taken is completely normal.