Hearing aids have come a long way but all of the ones I’ve used still basically suck when it comes to understanding speech. Part of it, I think, is that my loss isn’t bad enough that fully closed ear pieces are recommended and as such background noise is still free to obfuscate conversation.
It basically makes conversation in anything but a quiet room extremely difficult. My brain works overtime trying to fit possible words to what I hear. Sometimes I fail with pretty humiliating results.
It doesn’t take much before you just stop trying to talk with people. Especially with the younger crowd because they tend to speak the quietest. It varies by individual, but at least older people who’ve had some loss themselves will speak louder to compensate.
The worst is restaurants. Usually I can guess what’s being said by the server, but not always. Accents increase difficulty.
I used to be pretty out going, joked a lot with people. Now I avoid most conversations when I can.