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Lol no I’m walking away after the 3rd ‘what’ a person gives me in a row. That’s a huge pet peeve of mine.
I get anxiety about this though as I have a bit of an audio processing disorder where in any room with a lot of background noise I struggle to process what the person right in front of me is saying.
I don’t really know the best approach beyond pretending to know what the other person is saying.
If there’s a lot of background noise then that’s understandable but for example, the other day I went to home Depot to get some tools for a yard project. I asked an employee where the tillers were and she just said ‘what’ like 3 times in a row. I just said nvm and looked on my own.
I don’t know, I guess it just makes it seem to me like the person is not listening to me so why waste time?
For anyone not aware, if this happens to you frequently and you don’t have any hearing loss it can be a symptom of auditory processing disorder. If you have ADHD or are on the autism spectrum it’s more likely you also have auditory processing disorder.
Yep, sometimes I feel like my brain has conversation dyslexia. Like I hear the sounds just fine, but they mean nothing to me.
Same. Though the trigger I find is being in a place with a lot of conversations going on at once (such as a busy bar). Its like my brain is trying to process every conversation and can’t focus on the one that actually matters.
I’d been considering asking my doctor about this but I figure it’s not going to make much of a difference at this point. I have ADHD and got my hearing tested a few years ago because I was concerned about how often I couldn’t understand what people were saying.
Nope, my hearing is perfect. My brain just has a hard time decoding sounds sometimes I guess. A lot of times people sound like they’re mumbling. I’ve started telling people that I’m hard of hearing and asked them to speak a bit louder, slower, and more clearly. Makes a big difference!
Now add accents to the mix, and the problem becomes ten times worse. I always feel so horrible asking my foreign coworkers to repeat themselves because my brain just refuses to pick up what they’re saying. Oftentimes I get it completely wrong, or I just give up, smile and nod, and hope they weren’t asking me anything important. I already have trouble picking up on what people are saying the first time as is, even clear native English speakers…
