You know I always thought I had bad hearing - but I think I hear way too much actually and have trouble isolating speech noises.

This post brought to you by: hearing my digital garmin smart watch "ticking", while also noting that the furnace cycle went from high heat to low heat (which means the fan will turn down shortly), and noticing the cat in the litter in the basement while I'm up on the 2nd floor with the door closed.

@shockwaver I definitely have a delay in distinguishing speech noises, so I ask people to repeat themselves right as my brain has fully processed it already. I thought I had bad hearing as a teenager and saw an audiologist but they didn't find anything. I think it was just about digesting articulated words.

@theynege auditory processing disorder! I got a lot kinder to myself when I realized that it takes me a half a beat longer than "normal" to process words.

I'm also prone to completely missing the first 1 or 2 words of a sentence while my brain realizes it has to engage the "Speech processing subroutines". Usually the first word of a sentence isn't super critical but it can be - especially if it's like "Don't" or "not".

I've realized for non-word sounds, my brain has parsed and categorized the sound almost instantly - often times before I'm consciously aware of the sound. But for words? It feels like it takes an eternity to kick in, and by the time it does everyone is staring at me and waiting for a response..

@shockwaver It is bonkers how much I've learned and how many people I've met with similar experiences since I started to explore the #neurodiversity community and open my mind to the fact that even without diagnoses or fitting the boxes (based on white boys) of these broader conditions, I can still belong and relate to people on details like this.