Clark Meeder: Living with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)

What is APD?

Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is not a hearing disability in the “traditional” sense, in that it doesn’t involve any mechanisms of the ears themselves.

Rather, my brain does not have the ability to distinguish, identify, or fully interpret the sounds that I am hearing.

For me personally, APD significantly impacts my ability to understand what I am hearing.

For example, if someone says “Can you please send the holiday document to Christine and Michael?” I will hear “Can ou leaz sen the oly doc t oo Chris in and Mike l?” If that is hard to read, believe me, it is also hard to try to listen to.

And it can lead to errors; I would send the document to Chris and Mikaela, not Christine and Michael. And I might send the wrong document as well; I might guess that “oly” was supposed to be “only” or even “holy”, although I don’t think we have any such documents at my particular workplace!

In addition to the example above, if you are able to access audio, this video contains an audio simulation of what hearing with APD can be like, created by Melanie DesRoches: https://youtu.be/ipI8hOGjVUs

The audio example features broken speech, sentences with missing words and sounds, with a flood of background noise such as office chatter layered over it in such a way that makes the speech nearly completely incomprehensible and the ambient noises increasingly overwhelming.

Everything is just a sea of indistinguishable noise. Everything seems to be at the same volume level (although speech seems lower in volume than everything else), and I can’t make out “layers” of sound.

I have no directional hearing; For example, if a car drives by, it can be disorienting as I can’t tell where the car is coming from or where it is going. As a pedestrian, that can be frightening.

I was only formally diagnosed in 2019, in my late Twenties, after many friends and co-workers asked me if I had any hearing related disabilities; They had noticed that I needed people to repeat things frequently, I was unable to hear anything in our open plan office or on street level when walking with others, and so on.

Some people unfortunately assumed that I was ignoring them, or avoiding people, which wasn’t the case. Eventually, I figured it was worth investigating. Sure enough: I have APD.

People had asked me if I have any hearing related problems throughout my entire life, starting with teachers in school asking me if I could hear them when they called my name in class.

But because I could hear noise in general and my hearing screenings always came back without any notes, me and my parents had never been concerned. I had never heard of APD until I was referred to the Audiology department.

So, am I Hearing or Hard of Hearing?

There is a sort of impostor syndrome that kicks in: Do I count as hard of hearing? I’m still not sure; It seems to depend on who I ask. But either way, those of us with APD struggle to find a place within any community.

People with APD have very limited social options. I can’t go to restaurants or pubs, because I can’t hear anything amidst all the background noise. I am unable to make speech out at all in any such environment; My hearing therapist has encouraged me to learn lip reading skills, which is helpful, but at the moment with everyone wearing masks I’m still at a loss whenever I have to speak to someone. Talking over a phone is extremely difficult if not impossible, and causes significant strain.

Walking around with someone, I can’t hear anything either; Even the sound of wind ruffling through the leaves of trees often overwhelms the speech of others, which rules out parks and nature walks as well. No boat rides or drives, as the hum of motors does much the same. The volume in a movie theatre can be so painful that I have to leave well before the film is over.

Ambient noise in general can cause distress. It is hard for me to concentrate when I can hear others talking around me, a fan slowly turning back and forth, papers shuffling, doors opening and closing, footsteps of people walking around, and so on.

When I am overstimulated, which is often, it feels like static electricity or pressure building up in my head, and my muscles tense up, often without me recognising that it’s happening until it becomes overwhelming and I have to excuse myself to a quiet area to cry.

Currently, I am attempting to get the hearing devices recommended to me by my hearing therapist which might help with some of the above problems, but they are not available through the NHS.

As APD is often seen as exclusively being a children’s disability, most of the informational materials for APD are designed specifically for parents or young kids, and the devices themselves are made for children, with all of the accompanying documentation written accordingly.

It is oddly upsetting; Although the devices are perfectly suitable for use by adults as well, and I like that they come in plenty of colour options (no doubt to appeal to children), nothing about the informational materials suggests that adults can have APD too.

Added to the social isolation those of us with APD already face, it makes me feel even more lonely: Not belonging to any community, left to struggle with a disorder that nobody seems to understand, in need of help that is rare, specialist, and expensive… Then having to explain over and over that I’m not looking for resources for a child, I’m looking for myself, only to then usually be told that the only resources available are aimed towards younger people.

It seems like such a minor thing, but it makes me feel silly and embarrassed. It’s as if I was supposed to outgrow this, and I failed.

Clark Meeder is an Author and Illustrator, currently working in Healthcare Clerical Administration. He has APD as well as Dyscalculia and ADHD, and wants to raise awareness for lesser known and often invisible disabilities.