A Small Voice

A Small Voice

I have a small sounding voice. To some people, my voice sounds like a little girl’s voice. Even though it sounds normal to me, it doesn’t sound so normal to a lot of other people.

In a relaxed state, my voice registers on softer scale. Some people complain that they can barely hear me. In a tense state, my voice gets louder and even takes on a different tone and pitch. As a matter of fact, my voice can get very high and loud. I’ve always taken note of this since I was a child.

My Small Voice Around My Family

My family has always hated what they consider to be my normal sounding voice. They have always attributed my normal sounding voice as me being “fake”.

Around my family, I cannot be who I am. So technically, I can’t say what “fake” is when I haven’t been able to experience the “truth” of who I am around them.

Literally, I have never been allowed to freely be myself around my family. So, within their presence, I tense up, and so does my voice. There is not even a thought process to this. It’s just something that automatically happens.

In fact, when I am around my family, I am either mute or my voice registers deeper than what even I consider to be a normal voice for me. I do not know why this is, and I’ve spent many years trying to figure it out.

My voice around my family is more than just what would merely be considered a “code switch”. To my family’s ears, my smaller voice seems to register as more proper sounding as if I am not a part of them and wasn’t born from them. Whereas, my rougher sounding voice tone registers to my family as perfectly normal sounding.

Any time in the past that I’ve visited my family, I’ve had to prepare myself for the voice change. Technically, there’s no preparation really. I just become more anxious when I know I’m going to be around them. Everything about me changes, and I feel that I become less of who I really am just to make them comfortable.

When A Small Voice Becomes A Health Issue

By the time I’d leave my family’s presence after talking so loud and hard within a deeper voice register, I’d have a painfully raw, sore throat. In fact, as a child, I had frequent soar throats. I also had frequent bouts of laryngitis.

The laryngitis would become so bad during my early adulthood that a physician once told me that I would lose my ability to speak for good if I couldn’t find a way to relax my vocal cords. This same physician said that my voice box was in a state of distress.

As I recall, the very next day after that doctor visit, I went to work to let my supervisor know I needed to take a few days off to heal my throat, but I was unable to actually tell my supervisor anything. I was unable to speak. No words would come out of my mouth. I couldn’t even force words out.

An anxiety came over me like I had never known. The thought of never being able to speak again terrified me. Yet, there I stood before my supervisor completely mute. It didn’t matter that I often found myself in situations where I was selectively mute. However, this was very different.

The supervisor could tell I was highly distressed and assumed that I couldn’t speak because I had laryngitis. Although I did have laryngitis, in that moment I had become frozen in a panicked state of mutism. I was relieved when the supervisor told me to take as much time off as I needed to get well because I couldn’t do my job effectively if I couldn’t speak.

A Career Spent Using A Small Voice

During my then previous career, I was expected to talk, and there was no way around it. Voice lozenges, lemon and water, honey and hot tea, and rest for my vocal cords were all necessary for me to use in an effort to protect my voice. So it was always a good thing when I didn’t need to talk, but it was not always avoidable at work.

As a matter of fact, frequent speaking placed stress upon my voice box. A sore, painful throat was always the result of this stress. I don’t even have to talk very long or loud before my throat begins to hurt. So currently, having a job which doesn’t require me to talk a lot, if at all, is the absolute best.

A Small Voice Easily Identified

The bulk of people who know me, know me via my voice. I have been described as sounding like I am a little girl in an adult body. Despite the fact that I currently do very little speaking in group or public situations, my voice is always recognizable to others – even on the phone. It is said to be distinctive in sound.

Some people have said my voice sounds very soft. While others have said that it sounds very loud. I suppose it depends on the time of day and what I might be talking about. When I am passionate about what I am talking about, my voice can be quite exuberant, but when I am within a narcissistic environment, I tend to lose the desire to speak. My voice actually swelters and disappears.

The Psychology of A Small Voice

In a multitude of toxic situations, I’ve often felt like I’ve been forced to harden my voice as a defense mechanism. Yet, most often, I have always fallen into a state of mutism because it has literally felt like my voice has been snatched away from me. I am not so sure if my small voice and my bouts of mutism are connected to each other.

When I have listened to a recording of my voice, I have detested the sound of it because it does not sound like I’m an adult. I sound immature and as if I shouldn’t be taken seriously. Yet, people are quick to discover that my voice and manner of being don’t seem to match up.

Most troubling have been the number of men who despise my voice because it sounds – as one man put it – “mousy” and “broken”. Of course, on the flip side of the voice issue (as I previously stated) is the fact that my boldness, determination, and grit prove that there’s a disconnect … like something off.

My physical voice often appears to give people a first impression that I am timid and fearful when this is absolutely not the case. In fact, people soon find out shortly after meeting me that I am rather doggedly persistent in all my pursuits.

So the voice thing just doesn’t add up. It’s like an anomaly. It has somewhat led me to research how this phenomena can be, and I’ve found through reading about it that there is such a thing as the small voice syndrome for those who’ve experienced childhood trauma. It’s as if the voice gets stuck at the age of that trauma and never seems to mature along with the person.

I don’t know if this fact is the case for me, despite the fact that I’ve suffered trauma throughout my childhood, but I can say that my voice seems to be stuck somewhere inside of me as if it has been chained up. Oddly, though, this issue has never been discussed with me by any therapist I’ve seen. So, I don’t know.

I do know that I have experienced a type of psychological arrested development as a result of trauma, and I have felt and seen myself regress when I experience responses to trauma. I think of this particularly as it relates to my experiences with narcissistic abuse or experiences in situations where I felt that someone was attempting to exert control over me.

Specifically, I have found myself to freeze in place and to become completely immobile even if I can feel myself wanting to run. Once out of those types of toxic situations, I don’t go back. I also tend to stay away from people who evoke those triggers as well.

As far as it all concerns my small voice, I’ve often wondered if selective mutism has also played some part. If I freeze in certain social circumstances, it’s a type of situation where the need to take flight comes into play. If I can’t take flight, I freeze. If I freeze, I can’t talk. If I can muster up words, my voice sounds even smaller.

I’ve even taken note of my voice change if I feel as if I have to walk on eggshells around someone. It’s as if fear overtakes my voice and causes it to rattle. Truly, though, there’s so much that comes into play here, and it has all required I have patience as I attempt to understand it all.

Presently, I am still finding my voice … even my real voice in a vocal sense, but I’m glad my voice is finally unchained. In so many ways, I have been silenced throughout my life. There are so many people who preferably didn’t care to hear my voice and did everything within their power to stop its operation.

Until this blog, I have never freely been able to share my story, and I have felt that I have gone through most of my life being unheard. I have frequently been in situations where my voice didn’t make a sound because it was mute, and when I did make a sound, no one seemed to be able to hear it. It’s as if I’ve been invisible. If I haven’t’ been invisible, then I’ve been purposely ignored as if not to be seen.

This is not a “woe is me” or “please pity me” for my struggles kind of thing. It just is what it is and how my life has unfolded. I’m not a victim, and even when I have been a victim of someone’s abuse or malice towards me, I fight to survive … to rise above it all and keep going.

I know that with time comes healing but not necessarily because of it. Despite having a small voice, it’s my voice, and I’m finally speaking from a platform that makes me comfortable enough to speak. In time, I can only hope that area from which I’ve experienced physical and psychological trauma will heal too, and I’ll be comfortable enough to speak the sound of my true voice.