Change in my Voice

Recently I watched Colin Firth's "The King's Speech" where the protagonist plays King George V1 who overcomes his stammering problem with speech therapy. The movie is reasonably good but I got so nostalgic about the concept of speech / voice therapy which I myself have undergone (though not for stammering or stuttering reasons).

My case was more peculiar which not many, who knew me after 2006, know about. Till the age of 26, I had a different voice. Yes, I mean it !

So all my relatives, childhood friends, school friends, college friends and few ex-colleagues identify me with a voice which I didn't sport anymore after 2006. Lot of them suffered from a panic attack when they spoke to me in recent years :) And when I made my new friends listen to my old voice recordings, they look at me with disbelief :)

Just like any adolescent, my voice changed at 14, but it was softer and low. Thats the voice with which I made all my classroom seminars, presentations, group discussions for admissions, cracked job interviews, presented product demonstrations to clients, closed sales deals and on personal front made friends, entered into a relationship with my girlfriend. I never missed that macho kinda loud voice as I always believed more in content and gist than the channel of communication;

In March 2006, I suffered from a bad cold and my voice became hoarse for a while, but soon returned to my  normal soft one in a week. But I realized that I could shout or talk louder in my hoarse voice during cold than in my normal voice and then tried to talk in a hoarse tone deliberately. After some more practice, I felt that the hoarse tone was a bit softened and resulted in a distinct voice which was louder and more authoritative than my other (read: normal) voice.

After that day, I had two different voices !!!! And yes, I mean it again :)

I deliberately started using my new-found voice with new people I met and they liked my voice. My family and fiancée though initially got shocked, slowly got used to my new voice and in the course of time, my voice evolved completely and didn't look affected a bit. I was amused at my own voice therapy and entertained myself by reading a same sentence in two different and distinct voices :)

I never faced lack of confidence due to my old voice, but my new voice has brought into me a huge confidence factor as the efforts which I would have put in projecting my points of view with older voice were dramatically cut down by my new voice. Though my knowledge, conviction and presentation style didn't change with the new voice, the way opposite person perceives me changed a bit.

But the challenge was using my new voice before old pals or old voice with new people :). I didn't want to confuse myself and others and hence started talking in my new voice with old friends and colleagues too who were alarmed initially and then amused. They concentrated more on my voice than what I was intending to speak. It was fun.

Eventually I realized that I lost my old voice. I was shocked at the developments. Then I browsed through various voice therapy related books and online resources to know the reason for this phenomenon and realized that my old voice was not exactly my voice, but just a sound coming out of some unusual channel. If you got shocked by this, just imagine what I would have gone through :)

Yes, the voice which I used from the age of 14 to 26 was not my original voice. It happens with some kids that they subconsciously get shy of the adolescent developments and try to mask those to avoid peer embarrassment. Without my own knowledge, I might have done the same which resulted in a squeaky, soft and low voice. Thats the reason, that voice was blocked after the discovery of my original voice which was dormant for 12 full years :)

PS: I've been teaching since 2007