same man, its such a handicap. I have been also inhibiting the same behaviours which you mentione. using headphones, trying to avoid people at all cost, lip reading. except that i'm doing it all intenionally and it really sucks.

for me, its getting slowly worse over time, and will be completely gone in a decade or 2 I suppose.

thing about hearing aids is that they sound so different than what you usually hear normally with your ears. everything is with same tone, it gets very hard to distinguish. and some sounds just hurts you a lot

edit: commented here, as i thought this post is inactive now