i went to hearing therapy! (auditory processing disorder + what you can do)

Hi guys, a couple of weeks ago i went to Hearing Therapy (as i have Auditory Processing Disorder (as part of Sensory Processing Disorder/being Autistic) so thought i’d talk about what happened and some of the suggestions they made to make things easier.

I was referred to ENT (the Ears, Nose, and Throat department at my local hospital) by my GP, and after they’d taken a full medical history and checked my hearing to make sure it wasn’t a physical problem, I was referred for an appointment of Hearing Therapy with an audiologist. They were super friendly and re-capped some of the ways APD can affect you (like problems mishearing speech, remembering auditory information, and fatigue in situations that call for a lot of listening), as well as going through some ways that you can improve your auditory processing through training and work around the situations where you struggle.

The three main categories that the helping strategies for auditory processing were broken down into were:
Modifying the listening environment
Auditory Training
Compensatory Strategies (for auditory processing)
If you’re curious about learning about them in more depth, i found there was quite a bit out there online.

APD is also a big part of why a lot of my videos aren’t captioned - processing auditory information and turning that into written text takes a lot of energy and mental capacity, and right now i can’t manage the mental toll that has on me as well as doing the other things i need to do, like work. On a more positive note, if anyone would like to contribute subtitles to any of my videos, i’d really appreciate it! If you’d like to, you can let me know and I’ll credit you (:

Hopefully this has some helpful info for you - if you think that this sounds like you, it would be good to get it checked out by your doctor! Problems with sounds can have physical causes too (as well as the processing problems), so it’s worth ruling out anything there to be safe (:

Things i mentioned:
NHS “Communication tactics for everyone” pdf (made by West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust):
https://www.wsh.nhs.uk/CMS-Documents/Patient-leaflets/Audiology/6268-1-Communication-tactics-for-everyone-and-for-hearing-loss.pdf

The app that the audiologist mentioned for auditory training is called ‘Phonetic Birds’ - I think it’s available on the Google Play store, and as with a lot of auditory training apps apparently, is aimed towards children? I’ve not checked it out yet, but if you’re curious it might be worth looking up! Apparently it’s ‘designed to assist in improving audio discrimination and memory-sequencing’.

My post about using headphones for silence/ear defenders, and hearing sensitivity:
https://b-blushes.tumblr.com/post/175303319675/i-went-to-hearing-therapy-yesterday-because-i-have

The album I bought of ~nature sounds~ is on iTunes for £2.49, with 16 tracks that are between 19 and 30 minutes long, called “Natural White Noise 30 Min Wind Nature Sounds for Meditation Healing Relaxation Deep Sleep Study” (yikes) by “Power Ambient Music Therapy”.

The Cochlear UK website (https://www.cochlear.com/uk/home) was mentioned by the audiologist i spoke to as potentially having transferable information for hearing difficulties generally, so that might be worth checking out too!

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Find me on: 
tumblr @b-blushes or @collecting-sunlight (photography)
instagram @b_blushes
discord, in the Echo server, a new community for autistic people - if you’d like to join, send me an ask on Tumblr and I’ll send you the link! :D
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It's me, B! Shy and sleepy autistic, also a big fan of flowers, sunlight and spring.

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