My experience · Day 1
“It sounds normal in recordings, but it really freaks me out when I try and use it.”
I said this on the first day and kept circling back to it. The recording wasn’t the problem. It was what happened when I tried to speak. I wanted to use it, and I was frightened of using it. That contradiction was hard to explain to anyone who could only hear the sound.
This was intense fear, shame and a need to make it stop.
The fear could make my whole body shake. Exposing the lower voice, whether I meant to or it slipped out, brought feelings of shame and embarrassment that were deeply uncomfortable. After briefly revealing it as a teenager, I hid it as much as I could.
I was already trying to make my falsetto as low as possible. Yet a brief crack into my deep voice could feel humiliating. I spent so much energy avoiding situations where that might happen. I wanted a lower voice and feared being heard in it at the same time.
By the time I tried to switch, I was also facing a real identity crisis. I worried that the deeper voice would turn me into someone I wasn’t. Hearing an ordinary voice on a recording didn’t answer that fear.
Read the fuller story of the fear, hiding and identity crisis →Making the sound was one task. Using it was another.
I could make the sound alone. Then I would imagine using it at breakfast, answering the phone or talking to someone who had known me for years. Suddenly, the same voice felt much harder to use. Knowing how to produce it hadn’t answered how to feel like myself while someone else was listening.
Familiarity
The habitual voice has years of automatic use behind it. The lower voice may be physically easy and behaviourally unfamiliar.
Internal sound
Bone and tissue conduction mean your voice does not sound inside your head the way it sounds on a recording.
Physical resonance
New vibration through the throat, face or chest can feel disproportionately strong when it has never been ordinary.
Social exposure
A voice can feel manageable alone and impossible when another person might notice the change.
Identity
Changing a long-standing voice can raise questions about personality, masculinity and whether the new sound is really yours.
Automatic reversion
Stress, fatigue and divided attention can pull speech toward the most rehearsed pattern.
What the next recordings show
Useful came before comfortable.
At motocross, the lower voice carried over noise when my habitual voice struggled. By Day 15, the vibration was less distracting, but I still rated my comfort at only 20 out of 100. Those things were true at the same time.
That changed what I was looking for in the diary. Could I be heard? Did it feel a little less strange? Was I starting to use it around someone else? Those were changes I could describe, even when I couldn’t call myself comfortable.
Read those entries in orderIf you are in the middle of this
I made the strange parts easier to recognise.
I pulled together the recurring sensations, fears and setbacks from the diary, then placed a possible explanation beside each one.
Read the reassurance guideYou can ask for help with this part too.
Exposure therapy helped me slowly acclimatise to my new voice. Making the switch was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t suddenly wake up fearless, and the few weeks captured in the diary aren’t the whole timespan of that work. Looking back, I’m glad I kept going.
If the sound is there but using it feels overwhelming, tell your therapist about the situations that bring that feeling up. You can work together on how to approach them. There is no need to pretend the emotional part is already sorted because the voice sounds different.
If anxiety or questions about who you are have become hard to carry, talking with a counsellor or psychologist is another kind of support you can ask for. You deserve room to talk about what the change means to you.