I spent a really enjoyable day last Friday at Hearing Link’s ‘Living Well with Hearing Loss’ in Edinburgh taken by Linda Sharkey. This was a full day course covering many topics including sharing knowledge, connecting people and a display of equipment and gadgets. We were also treated to a very nice lunch.
Linda welcomed us all and explained the topics that we would be covering. She then asked us to introduce ourselves. Hearing Link courses are always very popular so I was not surprised that some of the participants came from as far as Dundee and Aberdeen.
One of the first things we were asked to do was ‘Avoiding’. We were to walk about the room with our heads down, avoiding eye contact. We were also asked not bump into anyone, just turn away if someone came too close.
We were then asked how we felt when we were avoiding the people in the room. I personally felt quite sad, vulnerable, and isolated. I think most people in the group felt the same.
We all wore name badges with a coloured dot so for the next part of the exercise we had to walk about the room with our heads held high and smiling. We had to look out for the person in the group wearing the same coloured dot on their name badge and ‘high five’ them as we passed. This was done with great hilarity and was a bit of fun and we all felt so much better after this part of the exercise.
We then had to participate in a bit of ‘Role Play’. We had to break up into four different groups and choose from a list of five problems. These problems were what some of us might encounter as a result of our hearing loss.
One person was nominated to give advice, acting as an ‘agony aunt’, with another of the group asking for this advice. We had to talk this through in front of all the people in the room. It was interesting that each group chose a different subject to discuss so we were able to benefit from the help and advice offered. It was really nice to see everyone being involved and interacting with each other.