Lip Reading and Coping in Conversation with Damaged Hearing

Shortly after the incident which permanently damaged my hearing 10 years ago (You can find that story in the "introduce yourself" subforum), I found myself being able to hold conversation without the constant "Repeat that, please" most often if I am able to look at the person's mouth move. If I were to look away for a second some of their words become muffled or completely incomprehensible.

Anyway, so I was just wondering if anyone else has found this as a good coping mechanism for severe cases of T, or any other little tidbits of wisdom on living with hearing loss. I still haven't found a way to fix my own voice volume, I am constantly asked to lower my voice when, to me, it sounds like I am at a pretty typical level. It makes me accidentally run over other people's words in conversation, making me come off as being very rude!

I hope what I've shared here comes to help someone in a similar situation.

 

A good friend of mine was a skilled lip reader before becoming severely deaf. She said it was like when she looked at people face-to-face, their volume went up. Her husband, my wife, and myself learned ASL because of her.

 

@Bobbinapples You are the first person I've found here that has the exact problem I do. If a person turns their head even a little bit I'm unable to decipher the words. I am constantly asking "what?", or cupping my hands behind my ears, and I also have jumped into the middle of a conversation and cut someone else off because I couldn't hear that they were talking and yes, very embarrassing and I know others thought I was rude. Sometimes I ask my friends if I'm talking too loudly as I hear my own voice differently than others. It's a tough perdicament and even after 8 years of dealing with T, HL, and H. Luckily my friends are great and we've had many a laugh together when I responded to something I thought they said, and my response had nothing to do with the actual conversation. I recently started doing pottery again and the noise of the electric wheels is awful, but even though I can't talk to people much its nice to be around a group and be productive and creative.