The Part Nobody Tells You
The grief that shows up before and after the fitting, the gap between what you expect and what you actually hear in a crowded restaurant, that gut feeling that “this isn’t helping like I thought it would…”
The hearing journey doesn't start at the audiology clinic. It starts the first time you notice something is wrong and tell yourself it isn't. This edition is about everything between that moment and the moment you recognize your treatment is making a positive impact.
This issue offers a bit of tough love: if you stay patient, your experience will rise up to meet your expectations. The real challenge is setting those expectations correctly. That’s part of being your own best advocate - and your audiologist should be a strategic partner in getting it right.
My name is Mark Parkinson. I wore hearing aids for 12 years and now have bi-lateral cochlear implants. I started What We’re Hearing to help those with hearing loss navigate a very confusing and frustrating time. Family members, friends, work colleagues, and the stranger at the cash register - they’re all on this journey with you.
Let’s get started……
💔 The Grief Is Real. And the Device Doesn't Fix It.
In April, the frontman of “Huey Lewis & the News” told Today.com what happened after he was diagnosed with Ménière's disease in 2018 — leaving him functionally deaf, unable to perform, and unable to hear music clearly even with cochlear implants. "I was suicidal," he said. "I can honestly say I understand why people kill themselves."
A 2025 systematic review confirmed that grief is near-universal in acquired hearing loss — shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, mapped directly onto the hearing loss experience across dozens of studies. The most important finding for anyone who has been fitted with hearing aids and still doesn't feel right: getting a device does not resolve the grief.
Clinically, this matters more than it's been acknowledged:
People with hearing loss are 2.16–2.87× more likely to experience clinically significant depression and anxiety. The primary driver isn't the decibel loss — it's the fatigue pathway: listening effort → withdrawal → isolation → depression.
A 2025 Nature Mental Health RCT (N=221) found that OTC hearing aids significantly reduced depression scores, loneliness, and social isolation over six months. A hearing aid, in a randomized controlled trial, as mental health treatment.
A separate study confirmed the core irony: hiding hearing loss makes the outcomes worse. The social withdrawal people use to avoid being seen as impaired accelerates the cognitive decline and depression they're afraid of being judged for.
A readiness-and-motivation study of 284,175 U.S. veterans found that emotional preparedness predicted two-year hearing aid success more strongly than audiometric severity. In other words, one’s mental health predicts hearing treatment outcomes more so than the severity of one’s hearing loss. You can sell someone a device. You can't sell them the emotional groundwork that makes them use it. That groundwork is the journey.
🎯 The Expectation Gap — What No One Says Before the Fitting
The number one complaint of new hearing aid users isn't the price, the fit, or the Bluetooth pairing. It's noise. Specifically: "I still can't follow conversations in restaurants."
A 2025 Springer study confirmed what audiologists know but rarely say at the first appointment: clinic performance tests systematically overstate real-world benefit. Speech-in-quiet assessments don't replicate reverberant, multi-source noise — the environment most people with hearing loss actually need help in. The gap between clinical measurement and lived experience is where the 90-day abandonment rate lives.
What 325 hearing aid users said they wish they'd known, from a December 2024 Which? survey:
Hearing aids help most in quiet one-on-one conversations. They help least in noise.
The adjustment period is weeks to months, not days — and it requires active use, not passive wearing.
First switch-on is often confusing and discouraging. The emotional moment comes later, if it comes at all.
Follow-up appointments matter as much as the fitting itself.
For existing users who feel underwhelmed: Most underperformance is a programming issue, not a device issue. Ask your audiologist for Real Ear Measurement (REM) verification. Ask whether your fitting was optimized for your specific high-noise environments. Ask about auditory rehabilitation — the communication strategy training that doubles hearing aid benefit and is almost never proactively offered.
For the industry: A patient’s readiness to change and how emotionally prepared someone is before the fitting, predicted two-year persistence more than the audiogram. The pre-appointment conversation about realistic expectations is the most important appointment in the process. It's also the one most commonly skipped.
🧠 Scientists Built a Hearing Aid That Reads Your Brain
The cocktail party effect. People with normal hearing can focus on one voice and largely filter out the others. The number one unresolved complaint of experienced hearing aid users? "I wear them but still can't follow dinner conversations" — just got its most serious scientific response yet.
A team published results in May 2026 of a system that decodes real-time auditory cortex activity to identify which voice a listener is attending to — then automatically amplifies that voice above all others. Tested in real noisy environments, the system correctly identified and amplified the target speaker with high accuracy. NPR covered it. The research community is paying attention.
For anyone who has explained to a patient spouse why eight channels and three microphone modes still can't make the family dinner table work: this is the research direction that's trying to solve that.
Our take: This is not a consumer product. It is a proof of concept — and a meaningful one. The current generation of hearing aids process sound. The next generation might follow attention. HEARING (Hearing Enhancement through ARtificially Intelligent NeurotechnoloGy) is an area we’re going to watch.
🎧 Quick Hit: A New OTC Hearing Aid from Bose
For someone who knows they need help, but isn't ready to see a clinic, and has been eyeing the OTC market: this is the current top-of-category option from a brand they already trust.
Lexie B3 Powered by Bose launched in May 2026 at $999/pair — FSA/HSA eligible, 32-hour battery with a 96-hour charging case, IP68 waterproof, Bluetooth 5.3 (iPhone and Android), and self-fitting via app. An internal study showed best-in-class speech-in-noise performance vs. prior-generation OTC devices in the same category. Bose offers a forty-five day trial period.
✍️ Closing Thought
Huey Lewis is 75. Thomas Rhett is 35. Caroline Lusk is 23. The hearing journey is not one demographic's story. What's changing is who's telling it — and who's listening. This newsletter exists because those stories matter and because the industry that serves people through this journey needs to hear them too.
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