The testimonial of Thérèse, who has hearing loss

On 30 June 2017, I walked through the door of the Tomatis Centre in Geneva because of a hearing problem. For some time, quite a long time in fact, the people around me had been complaining and telling me: “go and get your ears seen to, you're deaf”. At 71, I refused to accept this diagnosis from my family. I knew my hearing had gone down with age, of course, but I refused to be deaf, because to me deafness is a completely different problem.

It felt as if there was a veil, with an echo or a resonance, something not very clear in my ear. I could not hear myself speak and I had to make a big effort to talk with other people. I thought I was speaking very loudly, when in fact I was speaking very softly, and I raised my voice to a high pitch to make myself heard. It tired me out enormously.

I misheard some words or could not make them out at all. Very simple words, especially sounds ending in “on” or “an” (for example Roman, I could not understand it, whereas with high sounds, Crest for example, I had no trouble at all.

When I explained my problem to Mr Julien Frère, he reassured me by telling me that I could not repeat words or sounds my ear did not hear. Phew! At last someone who understood me.

Mr Julien carried out a hearing assessment, and the test showed an imbalance between my two ears: 40% for the left ear and 11% for the right ear. After treatment, on 6 September , the score had gone down to 14% for the left ear and 0% for the right ear, and on 26 November it was 0% for both ears. I still have one more 13-day block of listening to finish the treatment.

I have also noticed a clear improvement in reading aloud. When I read silently, I had no problem at all, but as soon as I started speaking it was a disaster. I dreaded reading aloud, because my speech could not keep up, I stammered, I mangled some words; in short, I humbly thought I could not read. In fact, there were some sounds I did not hear, or heard badly. To my great surprise and delight, through this method I learnt to recognise and above all to correct this problem, which had been with me since early childhood. I can read aloud. 😀

I can never thank enough the person who told me about this method, which has given me back a certain ease in listening and speaking.

Of course, I am not fooling myself: I have age-related hearing loss. But for the moment I do not need hearing aids, I can hear finer and finer sounds and, above all, I can hear myself speak. I no longer have that hubbub in my ear that used to tire me out.

I would especially like to thank Mr Julien Frère for listening to me and for his understanding.

🙏🙏🙏

Kind regards

Thérèse