Auditory Processing Disorder: How/When to tell people

Page 1 of 1 [ 7 posts ] 

PowderHound
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 13 Sep 2012
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 74

30 Oct 2013, 4:24 pm

I'm pretty reserved when telling people about having Asperger's, and usually only do so on a need-to-know basis, mostly because of stigmas. There is one feature/co-morbidity of my Asperger's that I simply can't hide (at least not when I'm tired), however, and that is having a Central Auditory Processing Disorder. It's got to be my single most frustrating symptom when talking to girls (worse than not picking up on signals even). I don't hear everything that people say, I don't remember what I do hear as well as most people would, and sometimes I jumble things. It's usually only a few words here and there, but when I'm tired, I can miss entire sentences, sometimes more. This makes it seem like I'm just not listening, and I don't get very far when this happens.

It's taken me a while to really pick up on the extent of this (despite many subtle hints from others :roll: ), but after talking to someone in a 7am class a few times this week, I realized that I really do need to start explaining. I'm borderline comatose that early, and caffeine only does so much. What do you think is the best way to bring it up, both in this situation and other scenarios?

It's been my experience that very few people have ever even heard of CAPD, and I'm not quite sure what the best way to describe it is (a disorder? a condition? just call it a form of dyslexia?). I bring a voice recorder to all my lectures, and it's crossed my mind to use it to bring up the topic somehow. I have a friend who is "hearing impaired", and I've considered borrowing that term also. Suggestions?



smudge
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Sep 2006
Age: 36
Gender: Female
Posts: 7,716
Location: Moved on

30 Oct 2013, 5:25 pm

I know what CAPD is. You don't have to tell people you have it. People don't like hearing about disorders and such, so it's far easier to make up other reasons why you can't hear them. Especially at that time in the morning, people are more likely to accept that you're tired and can't concentrate, which is a perfectly valid reason (to them) why you can't hear them. It's perfectly acceptable to have that excuse for every morning - jokey, "I'm always knackered in the morning. I'll try to concentrate on you but I can't guarantee anything!". Using the inability to concentrate as an excuse, works well.

You can randomly blame it on tiredness any time of the day - "Oh, it was all that travelling", "I've just had a big lunch and I'm sleepy", "I've been at work all day", "It's early in the morning!".

Also, when you can't hear someone, just shrug it off to the other person. Just say, "Sorry?" as if it's no big deal. If you're on the phone, it's a perfect excuse to say that the line is bad and so you can't hear them properly. If you're outside, blame the traffic (still as if it's no big deal). In a pub - the background music. You can say stuff like, "Oh! I'm sorry, I just recognised that tune and was trying to put a name to it".

When you're in a crowded room, imagine you and the other person are in your own personal bubble. This helps you to tune into what they're saying. It still definitely requires a lot of concentration, but it helps you to concentrate on them more so the inability to decipher them isn't as bad.

Part of the disorder involves delay in processing what people say. Sometimes when somebody first talks to you, it can sound like gibberish until you've unscrambled it in your head a few seconds later. Sometimes you can get away with extra processing time by saying, "Pardon?" while they repeat themselves. It either gives you more time to decipher, or it makes what they said more clear.

I hope that helps. Good luck.


_________________
I've left WP.


nick007
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 4 May 2010
Age: 41
Gender: Male
Posts: 27,059
Location: was Louisiana but now Vermont in the police state called USA

01 Nov 2013, 1:28 am

I have dyslexia in addition to other issues including sometimes having problems processing what others say if there's lots of background noise or if I wasn't really paying attention when they started taking. I do tend to remember what I hear well but I can get the specif details confused like names, numbers, dates, order ect but I remember & comprehend the gist of what happened fairly well if I don't get hung up on getting those minor details confused & it's not NT talk like figurative speaking, metaphors, sarcasm ect. The only mental related thing I told people I had was dyslexia. That & ADD/ADHD were the only diagnoses I had when I was in school & I went to a special school for dyslexia from middle of 6th through 8th so I've been used to the dyslexia label & I think there's alot more awareness of it & understanding than if I would say Aspergers or auditory processing disorder.


_________________
"I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem!"
~King Of The Hill


"Hear all, trust nothing"
~Ferengi Rule Of Acquisition #190
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ru ... cquisition


RetroGamer87
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,932
Location: Adelaide, Australia

01 Nov 2013, 11:13 pm

I've suffered from this for as long as I can remember and until a few weeks ago I didn't even have a name for it. I can barely understand people in a crowded room but have no difficulty at all understanding people one on one. There have been times when I've pretended to be hard of hearing when I actually have good enough hearing to understand people whispering when they thought I was out of earshot.

It's been a problem at work but I've been there for four years and now I think "what's the point of telling the now, they'll wonder why I didn't tell them when I started there". It began when I started listening to music on my phone with headphones and they said it was against the rules to use both headphones at once. They said I had to only have one earbud in. At first they said it was because they were concerned about fire safety and they didn't want anyone to miss hearing the fire alarm.

After a while of pointing out that the fire alarm is extremely load and I would still be able to hear it easily they changed their tune. They thought of a new reason on the spot to justify their stupid rule and then acted like that had been the reason all along. They said it was because when I had both earbuds in I couldn't here them and just to prove a point the next few times when they wanted my attention they'd walk up right behind me and say my name in a not too loud voice for a little while and when it would take me 30 seconds to notice they were there they would accuse me of wasting their time. Why couldn't they just tap me on the shoulder? Why did they have to stand exactly behind me? As though that's a normal way to talk to people. They did it on purpose because they didn't want to admit they were wrong when they said I wouldn't be able to hear the fire alarm. That's typical office logic isn't it? Keep the rule even if the reason for it is invalid. Just make up a new reason on the spot. There have been many times when they would make up a new rule and then tell me it had always been that way when I'd been there for years and they'd never mentioned it before.

So I think if they're so concerned that I can here them when they're standing behind me and pompously speaking softly (even though they speak to loud the rest of the time) I'll just buy some open headphones. There ones aren't sealed up and I can hear what other people are saying. I may not hear their exact words but I at least knew they were trying to talk to me straight away so I could take them off. These weren't ear buds, they were ones that go over the head. One of my supervisors (of which I have to many) said I couldn't wear those headphones because they were rigid ones so I couldn't have one phone in at a time. I pointed out they were open ones and I noticed straight away when he started speaking to me.

He said he'd already realized that but I couldn't wear them because the other employees would say it's unfair and they wouldn't understand the difference between sealed and open headphones. So this was all about maintaining the illusion of fairness and keeping up appearances. The trouble is, one of the senior staff had been wearing two headphones for the last few days. Now bear in mind, most of these "senior staff" are actually younger than me. They're not real mature either. They're good at their work but they have no knowledge of managing people (except for the high up executives but I don't see them often). They outrank me just because they can work 40 hours a week without getting burnout and they have a diploma from the local community college. I'm being bossed around by people who have never been to a real college and don't even have a degree. So anyway I wanted to point out this guy was wearing both headphones but I didn't say anything because I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn't remember his name (pretending to know who people are is another challenge I face in life).

That was all a couple of years ago but recently I manage to put a name to the problem I've been having all my life. By this point I'd gone from music to audio books because in music mixed for stereo I could only hear half the instruments. The problem is I'm having trouble concentrating on my work because everyone is talking loudly. I don't care what they're saying but I still can't concentrate. They like telling me to get back to work but they're always goofing off and talking about something completely vapant like what is the latest useless product from Apple or whatever crap it is that NTs talk about. Sometimes they even stand around one guys Macintosh watching some stupid Youtube video. If I look at the internet they accuse me of slacking off even though I've completed my last talk and I know it will be a couple of hours before they bother to give me another one. They expect me to continue working even when I don't have any work to do. Some times they've gone the entire day without giving me a task and they just say I should check my emails and tidy my desktop. I think "right, that will pass the time for two minutes". I've gone so far as to email myself entire novels and as I read them all day they just thought I was checking my emails for hours at a time. And they say us guys are oblivious :?

If I talk to someone they tell me to get back to work but they talk all the time and I can see they're not working because they're not even sitting at their desks. So just yesterday I can't concentrate because of what I know now is ADP and I'm thinking to myself "if I could have both headphones in I'd only have to listen to one voice and not many but that's against the rules and it's too late to tell them about ADP because years after the debate took place they'd just say I was making an excuse". So I start talking to this other aspie about a scientific matter but then one of my supervisors tells us we have to stop talking because she can't concentrate on her work. WTF? She doesn't have auditory processing issues and this one talks all the time. Hypocrisy much?

The other aspie says she was addressing me specifically because I have a louder voice. I had to be a bit loud because he was a few meters away but the staff gaffaw pretty loudly at the latest cat video on Youtube anyway. I say to him that yes I do speak loudly and he speaks a bit more softly but I was three times further away from her than he was and since the perceived volume of sound is inversely proportional to the square of the distance I should only be a ninth as loud or about 30 decibells quiter. I didn't bother explaining this to the supervisor because when I talk this way to NTs their eyes glaze over or they get angry with me. It's not my fault they can't handle something out of middle school psychics.

So in summery I have to cope with a continuous stream of chatter and then get told to be quite by someone who doesn't have CAPD. I shouldn't be surprised she's cranky because I suspect she's anorexic. She weighs about 90 pounds and who eats a salad for lunch instead of going to the cafeteria? Salad has lots of vitamins but you also need calories to survive. Her boyfriend is quite wealthy so I guess it was all worth it for her. I have to put up with general office hypocricy. Maybe I should be a lumberjack but I don't like being far away from civilization and I probably wouldn't enjoy being in a factory either.

BTW just to get back onto the topic of love and dating there's also been times when CAPD made it difficult for me to understand what girls were saying and many of them like hanging out in crowded places. So ends another hypergraphic episode but I managed to keep it under 1,500 words.



hurtloam
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Mar 2011
Gender: Female
Posts: 8,743
Location: Eyjafjallajökull

02 Nov 2013, 9:55 am

smudge wrote:

Part of the disorder involves delay in processing what people say. Sometimes when somebody first talks to you, it can sound like gibberish until you've unscrambled it in your head a few seconds later. Sometimes you can get away with extra processing time by saying, "Pardon?" while they repeat themselves. It either gives you more time to decipher, or it makes what they said more clear.


That is a very good explaination. I have this problem, but when I've tried to explain it people don't understand and think that I'm just not paying attention. It's so frustrating. I can hear a noise of words, I can see their mouth moving, but I have no idea what they are saying until I ask them to repeat it and as they begin to repeat it again what they said the first time suddenly starts to make sense before they finish what they are saying again.

I would just blame tiredness. I blame everything on tiredness anyway.



jerry00
Toucan
Toucan

User avatar

Joined: 28 Apr 2013
Age: 43
Gender: Male
Posts: 269

02 Nov 2013, 10:17 am

It's hard to tell how much of it is down to a disorder and how much of it is just background noise or people mumbling words or whatever.

It's something you have to learn to cope with and not talk about I think. Some people will accommodate your needs even if they don't know you have a disorder, most people wouldn't accommodate your needs even if they knew you did., and I really don't see much that can be done about it.



VIDEODROME
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,691

02 Nov 2013, 10:20 am

I've heard the ability to tune in to conversation in a crowded noisy place as "The Cocktail Party Effect".

I also seem to have a hard time understanding Intercoms, CB Radio, and sometimes Cell Phones.