When I was young, my parents had my hearing tested because I appeared to struggle to hear and listen. They found that I had (and still have) rather waxy ears, but the problems persisted after this was dealt with.
My difficulties lie in listening, not in hearing.
First, try to consider the difference between the two concepts. Hearing is really just whether or not you receive auditory information, but listening involves understanding the information. When you go to a foreign country, or watch a foreign movie, you can hear what everyone is saying perfectly clearly. But you will struggle to listen and understand what they are saying. If you have been taught basic aspects of the language you may be able to listen and understand parts of what people say, but you will need to use a lot of energy and effort. You’ll likely rely upon context clues to understand what someone says.
For me, listening to what people are saying feels a bit like listening to a foreign language. My ability to do so fluctuates; sometimes I can understand near perfectly, but other times (usually when I’m overwhelmed), I just have to tell the person ‘I can’t understand what you’re saying. I can hear the noise but can’t translate it into words’.
So often, I manage to hear and understand part of what someone says, and have to guess the rest based upon context clues. This often leads to misunderstandings and errors, so I’ll repeat what someone says to check I heard them correctly. If I cannot understand what they mean after asking a few times for a repeat, I’ll usually give up and mirror their facial expressions to imply that I heard them. People often try shouting the words if I ask more than once, but this doesn’t make it easier to understand them. It just causes even more sensory overload so I will have even more difficulty understanding them.
And sometimes, I struggle to even hear someone, because I hear everything. As I’m writing this, my Mum, Aunt, and Uncle are having a conversation in the background. I can hear everything they say, and cannot in any way block it out unless I wear headphones. So I have 2 streams of information in my head. One is processing what they are saying, and the other is deciding what to write and organising my thoughts. Now when you’re in an environment where people are talking all around you, or there are lots of tiny noises, it’s even more difficult to focus on your own thoughts in the mess. It’s incredibly hard to then try to hear what a single person is saying, and focus on their voice out of the din. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack; there are tons of hay strands (noises and conversations) going on, and a single needle to find amongst it all.
I cannot block out background information, and cannot hold more than one conversation at once because of this. My head simply cannot hold enough information to process it all. I think non-autistic people have a filter so there is less information going in that reaches the part of the brain that processes auditory information, so they can easily listen to that tiny trickle of information. Whereas my brain is drowning in the noise.
And sensory overload can make it worse. Whilst I struggle to listen at the best of times, when I’m in sensory overload I cannot differentiate between noises and have no room in my brain for listening. All of my energy is going into coping and trying to reduce my sensory input and ignore it. Listening requires focus on sensory input and analysing it, which is impossible when in sensory overload.
I like having subtitles on when watching shows and movies, because that helps me expect what I’m gonna hear so I can more easily listen. Additionally, I find it much easier to remember and focus on something that is written down than something I hear. In school, I write down large parts of what I am told as soon as the teacher says it because of this. Often, teachers will tell you ‘put your pens down and listen, you’re going to need to remember this’. That’s just… the complete opposite of how I work. So I have to ignore and reject this instruction and write it down anyway. This is stressful, because lying and breaking rules feels extremely wrong to me. I can do it when necessary, but don’t enjoy it. So it is much better when teachers consider different learning styles, and don’t point out the kid who continues writing it down when told not to (this is very embarrassing, and doesn’t help when you’re already struggling to make friends).
So overall, being told to ‘just listen’ is fairly useless. If it was that easy, don’t you think I would be doing it already?