I know that what I am going to say may sound trivial but I cant get past it. I am in my mid thirties and have never until yesterday heard a recording of my voice. I have no friends, its been like this around 15 years, just me by myself. So I have never had any recording made of how I look or sound ( I had photo taken two years ago but that's it). Whenever I listened to myself speak it always sounded a certain way to me. This has always matched how I truly felt inside( I hated this for years). I have been bullied a lot through the years for being gay ( even though I tried not to be gay) and always thought that this was because I had a really soft, cute voice, which I have recently started to accept and even like about myself. It took me years to accept who I am and have only in the last year or two started to like me. So when I heard this recording of this sickeningly masculine voice I felt really terrible. I don't understand why I feel this way. my sister who made the recording when we won the marriage equality referendum here in Ireland, said everyone feels this way when they first hear their own voice. It is like someone else's voice has been grafted onto me and it does not fit who I really am. Every time I talk now I am painfully aware that I sound this way and I hate it.I was wondering if anyone else experienced this? feel free to let rip if you think I am being stupid
You are not being stupid at all and it's far from trivial, but your sister is right, our voice never sounds quite the same on a recording. When I'm speaking to people I hear a fairly neutral voice, but when I hear a recording of my voice I think I sound rather camp and much younger than 39. It has its advantages and disadvatages. Women tend to warm to me, because my voice is quite soft, but when I'm dealing with men I often have to assert myself to be taken seriously and I don't like that. I don't like having to compensate because my voice lacks authority. What can I do though, apart from put on a false voice? It sounds like you have recently started to make peace with something that you hated for a long time -- not just your voice, but your sexuality too (interlinked issues, maybe?) but this recent recording has somehow been a setback. If you'd heard the recording before you started to make peace with things would you have been happy or sad? In the same way as my voice has its advantages you need to see the advantages in having a stronger and more masculine voice and try to make it work for you, rather than coming to resent it. In some repects it may endear you to other people to have a stronger voice.
