[ombrétwilight]

My voice is tolerable to me in real time but on tape, it's just

I have gotten feedback from many people regarding this and the general consensus seems to be negative. I have a really masculine, monotonous and whiny voice, which is a helluva bad combination when you're an 18-yr-old girl. My speech also tends to be jumbled and confusing and I use too many fillers.

If I ever heard someone who sounded like me, I would want to punch them in the face. Now I feel really bad for my T who has to listen to me complain about my screwed up life for hours in these dulcet tones...

[ladytiger]

I am working with my social worker on finding your voice. I am 10 yrs older than you and I have a monotone, masculine voice. It's high pitch when I am hyper and when I am around certain people, I sound like a high school girl! Reason being is because I want to sound "normal." I guess when I get very upset with some people, I sound masculine and that side of me comes out. However, I will have more of this conversation tomorrow morning with my social worker.

People have told me for years I sound like a guy nothing fem about me. If you saw my full name, the only thing that's fem is my middle name while my 1st and last names are masculine. If I have a fem middle name, wouldn't that mean I am a woman?! Well, I have seen Latino men with Maria as their middle names. Even my speech is jumbled and messed up (due to my mom's poor *** English) and people say I don't enunciate my words and speak clearly/loudly. If you hear my voicemail on my phone, you'd think you're calling a guy!

[offthegrid]

I don't have a melodious super sexy girl voice, plus I sound really country to some people. Sometimes I HATE it. You can certainly make sure that when you speak you're just a bit clearer than you think you have to be. I kind of had to work on that when I went to college (I have an accent that wasn't as…respected by certain people). Oddly enough, watching older movies from the 1940s/50s helps with that. Same thing with using fillers. catch yourself doing it and try not to. It's an annoying habit to break and you will use fillers at some point but again, it's something that you can change. The more experience you gain with things, the better this will get as well.

Just because you don't have a high pitched voice doesn't mean it's not attractive. The stereotypical newscaster female (at least in my imagination) has a deeper voice. There are several female actresses who have deeper voices and that was/is part of their appeal. Joan Crawford and Lauren Bacall come to mind immediately. It can make you sound womanly and mature.

[ladytiger]

When I was 18, I was told my voice sounded like I was between 25-30 yrs old. I know one anchor on the golf channel name Kelly Tilghman who has a deep sounding voice and she is all woman! People out there were wondering if she is MtF and she isn't at all. It's funny, men say a woman who has a deep voice sounds too much like a guy and those with high pitch, annoying kid voices are too much for them - which is it?!? lol

I never really worked on my voice before but started doing it this month. When I am around people, I sound like a kid. It seems as though my inner child wants to be a kid around people or something. When I am very pissed, I sound like a New Yorker, but was born and raised in Cali never been to NY - that part throws people off! lol My social worker and others have said I need to be boisterous and project my voice out there to people used to be able to do that when I was a kid. When I speak, people always gotta turn around to stare I am like did I say something? Something about my voice that made you turn around? I always wondered why people both men and women always had to turn around every time they hear me. You should hear me when I am at a desk asking someone for directions I get looks or ordering food from the deli at a grocery store.

I despise being accused born a woman with both male and female parts or MtF transsexual when neither of those don't fit me at all.

[ombrétwilight]

I asked my (tactless) guy friend today and he told me, "Have I ever told you I ****ing hate your voice??" LOL apparently according to him, my voice could potentially sound nice if I didn't slur my words and enunciated them properly. Also he said that I sound the same i.e. flat/emotionless no matter I am happy/sad/angry/bored.

I agree with this and it can maybe be attributed to the fact that as a child, I've learnt that showing emotions was a dangerous weakness. My mom beat and yelled at me, so besides my default rage I kept stony about my feelings.

Originally Posted by offthegrid

Just because you don't have a high pitched voice doesn't mean it's not attractive. The stereotypical newscaster female (at least in my imagination) has a deeper voice. There are several female actresses who have deeper voices and that was/is part of their appeal. Joan Crawford and Lauren Bacall come to mind immediately. It can make you sound womanly and mature.

That's true, I actually do love a deep, sophisticated, full-bodied woman's voice. (thinking of sexy smoker voices haha, but I don't smoke). Sadly my voice sounds nothing like that and if I could pick an ideal one it would be my counsellor's. She has the most pleasant, amazing, clearest and sweetest voice ever I had. No wonder she's a therapist - her voice alone soothes and heals.

[H3rmit]

Play around with recordings and you can improve your voice. Don't be too hard on yourself if you sound awful in a therapy session. The therapist is listening to your feelings, not the beauty of your voice. Play around with recordings and you will be able to find or create something nice in your voice, I believe. You can change it!

[ladytiger]

I was told by some people I sound angry, depressed, not interested. Some people say I sound fine and others not so much at all. I am stony about my feelings too probably why I don't get emotional in my tone unless I am very hurt.

[ATJC]

My voice is bearable to me too until I play back any audio recording, then I don't want anything to do with it. No one has ever said anything to me about it so it might not be THAT bad, but at the same time maybe no one wants to hurt my feelings? I know my speech impediment doesn't help. I just don't listen to myself speak.

[Perna]

How we sound to ourselves, even listening to something taped, is not how other people hear us. Too, their perceptions of us as someone else also change how they hear our voice and "see" us in ways we cannot get because we are stuck being ourselves with our own experiences of us, etc.

I would talk to your T about how you feel about your voice, ask her how she perceives it and brainstorm ways you can practice correcting some of the little faults like using too many fillers, etc. My husband has a good line he uses on me, "I don't hear any nouns!" which gets me to stop what I am saying and think it through more, get a complete sentence going, LOL. I get excited and trip along merrily, flitting from subject to subject with no references and lose my listeners. My T obviously agreed with that as she asked could she borrow my husband's line

[ManOfConstantSorrow]

My own voice is unbearable - its a shyness/self-esteem issue I expect. I did finally listen to it because I had to for work and then I noticed that it is like many other voices on television/radio when interviewing men of my age - a kind of accent-less, classless (don't ask if you don't live in UK), undemonstrative southern English that is very common and actually sounds quite authoritative (to me). I still don't like to hear it though.

[moon pigeon]

Supposedly, hating ones recorded voice is a really, really common thing. I forget the exact mechanisms, but it's something to do with how our skulls vibrate when we talk that it changes how we hear our own voices. Audio recordings don't have this, so the voice sounds totally different.

I second the people who said play around with recordings. I also like what was in the movie "The King's Speech", where he had loud music on headphones as he read stuff aloud. It was more for a stutter, but I could see this for beginning to get better speaking because the music covered up his own voice, which was makign him really self-aware, which made the stutter worse.

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by offthegrid

I don't have a melodious super sexy girl voice,

Girlie voice is not super sexy.

It may be cute, but may be annoying.

In any event, not super sexy.

Scarlett Johansson/Marylin Monroe has/had a raspy, low, deep, sensual voice.