c-PTSD harmed my voice. Now I’m slowly getting it back.
Yes, it’s a thing. If you relate, perhaps my story can help you too.
Last night’s session was a nightmare. Don’t get me wrong — I had a ton of fun, I was in good company, and people appreciated my singing. But it was a nightmare on my vocal chords, because I once again relapsed and fell back into a bad habit I’m now trying to break. I’m talking about a bad habit I didn’t even know I had or where it came from, until very recently.
Perhaps the fact I even felt it, indicates some progress. For a very long time, I mean almost three decades long, I strained my voice 24/7 without realising. I used to say my throat was fragile, because I’d get a sore throat at least once a month, even when I was feeling perfectly healthy. I was often disrespected and dismissed by people who had no apparent reason to feel that way about me or didn’t even know me enough, and I couldn’t find a reason for that. I was utterly puzzled that even with 10+ years of singing practice, my range seemed to forever stay in that very limited place. Today I know what was behind all those problems: my real voice isn’t the voice I unconsciously cultivated.
If you follow me, you know I’m now on a journey to recover from c-PTSD caused by abusive caretakers in childhood and teenage years. I sometimes speak about it here on Medium.
First of all, please take a minute to watch this video:
I first watched this video some time ago out of curiosity, back when I still believed my natural range was in soprano territory.
For my surprise, I went even lower than her, without trying too hard. The exercises she gives in the video all involve relaxing — really relaxing. Not this fake relaxation I used to do where I’d just sort of “pick up where I left” in my speaking voice when I attempted to sing (aka alarmed and full of tension, because yes, I used to be tense whenever I spoke too. That’s why I said 24/7).
I am no phono-audiologist by any means, and I won’t be able to explain the mechanism behind what I was doing vs what I’m doing now with my voice, so please be mindful of that. It’s far more sophisticated than just “forcing past my limits” in a blatant manner, since I’m sure if I did that, it would hurt instantly and not just harm me gradually on the long term. What I can do is tell you what it feels like to “fool” myself into believing I was relaxed when I really wasn’t, and why I think it happened in the first place. But before we get into that, let’s take a look at the full story and the phases my voice went through:
Church choir — early puberty
I’ll start the narrative at early puberty, since I’m not sure it’s relevant to include my child voice. It has matured already, and won’t go back to where it used to be — just like everyone else’s voice matures and changes.
We didn’t really follow the faith, but I went to a Catholic school because it was allegedly the “best and most expensive” in the area, where I got to study alongside the sons and daughters of local millionaires and other important people. Like with any decision my NM (narcissistic mother) ever took, her intent was to look wealthy and feel superior to the “common pleb” around her. I didn’t care, I was just a child. But sure, I made a few friends, especially in choir.
I spent a good few years at this school, and developed an interest in music early on. Instrument classes were unfortunately cut out when I was just starting, but the church choir went on, so I ended up becoming a bit of a singer music-wise. (Today I’m finally living the dream of playing harp, but that’s a tangent for a different post). The teachers and conductors were great and somehow managed to keep this crowd of kids under control. We did a lot of practical exercises, but they were designed for kids and young teenagers, obviously, so we didn’t learn the theory behind them. We just followed.
This is not to say school was perfect. Not at all. I suffered some bullying there, like the obvious outsider I was, but it was still better than the situation at home — which could be why I look at it fondly now. And I have this very vivid memory of how my voice evolved from children’s choir, all the way to singing with the other alto girls in church. It’s a nice memory, so cozy (among a series of traumatic events) that it felt like a fever dream, like it wasn’t actually real. First, it doesn’t fit with the whole trauma because it was a choice NM let me make without her input (unlike everything else), and second, it doesn’t fit with the nature of my voice. Or what I THOUGHT was the nature of my voice! But the more I dig into the past, the more it makes sense:
I also recall having a bit of a deep voice when I talked, and the few friends I had were altos too — because obviously, we met in choir, and became closer in class as well.
I did in fact know other girls with a variety of voices (especially the ballerinas. NM wanted me to dance because it “looks” good. I never cared) but they weren’t exactly my clique and we didn’t get on, despite NM’s attempts to create a friendship between us just because those ballerinas were popular and superficial.
You can see a recurring theme: NM desperately trying to get me to stand out by outdoing other kids, and me desperately trying to just fit in somewhere by blending into the crowd. This also contributed for people around me (including school psychologists and so on) to invalidate what I went through because if you’re gonna be simplistic about it, who doesn’t want a “dedicated” mother who gives you “the best things”? Who doesn’t want a “confident” mother who pushes you to “succeed” too? Who ended up looking like the “insecure and unambitious weakling” in this whole story? Exactly.
In order to side with me, people would have to first take a long hard look at their internalised prejudice, social constructs, and overall darkness. They’d have to first admit to themselves that they’re feeding into toxic, predatory, imperialistic ideals of “success” and “good image”. And most people aren’t willing to go there. They don’t have balls for that. So instead, they just play dumb and pretend they “can’t possibly know what made Lucy feel so sad”.
Today I no longer want that. I’d rather be alone than among the weak, because the weak will always leave the heavy lifting to me and act entitled. But as a child, it would have been nice to have people’s support.
You see, our entire societal structure rewards narcissism. And don’t even get me started on the extremism and all-or-nothing mindset prevalent here in the West, which makes people consider me a hypocrite for simultaneously admitting to being a zero-frills kind of person, AND being in favour of more social justice at the same time, as if this was either-or and I had to choose. As if leftist people needed to be damsels in distress lazying about, while only the right-wing gets to be the badass go-getters. As if only the polarised extremes existed and we couldn’t ever have some goddamn balance in our lives. But before this becomes a rant, let’s go back to the timeline:
Parentification — high school
This is what I usually call the “hardcore phase” of my trauma. It started a long time before, but only reached its peak during high school. Perhaps it was the divorce — which I even helped with and emotionally supported NM during the process like an unpaid therapist, while she took it all for granted and only kept asking for more and more proof of loyalty instead of simply feeling grateful. Or maybe the divorce just contributed to her becoming more and more tyrannical and distrustful, but it was bound to happen one way or another. I don’t know. I don’t care.
The fact is there was a divorce and she got to keep us, the teenage children. She fooled everyone into believing she was getting out of an abusive relationship, when in fact it was just a huge projection and she was the abuser all along. Outsiders would look at this story and immediately assume it was “the divorce” that brought me trauma, when in fact — let me repeat — I actually helped. I was okay with it. I understood, at 15, that when adults don’t get along, they shouldn’t live together. I didn’t even care about whose fault it was, all I wanted was peace.
But NM disagreed that the blame game was unimportant. In fact, she wouldn’t let me forget how she was the Big Victim, and dad was completely evil. She’d threaten to abandon me “to dad’s house, where they work with the devil” every time I displeased her, even slightly. She would constantly remind us that it was taboo to even pick up the phone and talk to dad, because he was constantly on the lookout for information about her we might accidentally share.
Again, a projection. I didn’t know at the time, only now I know. SHE was constantly on the lookout for sensitive information about EVERYONE in order to maintain the upper hand, and bribe people, and start smear campaigns if they didn’t obey her like sheep. Living with HER was the actual hell; it would have probably been better if she “abandoned me to dad”. But I was too scared to even think of the possibility.
I’d take a deep breath every single day before going back home from school, preparing for the worst just in case she would be in a bad mood and decide to blame her misery on me, or my brother, or whatever animals we were keeping now, or the house, or God himself… Anything that would take the responsibility off her. Her scapegoat (dad) was gone, after all.
And that’s when my very earliest memories of having a high-pitch voice come from. In the shower I’d “sing” along to Disney princess songs, Nightwish, Avril Lavigne etc. I hadn’t even paid attention to this drastic change in pitch (I suppose I had worse things to worry about aye?) so I am not sure the exact moment it started happening, but I remember it felt exhausting to sing, or simply talk, or use my voice at all. So much so, that I became a quiet person and would only talk if extremely necessary. You see, I wasn’t exactly afraid of people. I don’t think I had social anxiety. Nobody scared me more than NM, so in a way, that taught me to be fearless when she wasn’t around. I was just physically unable to speak much.
Breaking the habit for a brief moment — adulthood
When I first took up sean nós singing, here in Ireland, I became a big fan of this style because it breaks the rules of [mainstream, western, modern] singing. It was new and fresh and exciting. It took me out of the comfort zone, and still does. But above all else: it gave me a bit of a glimpse into my real voice, which had been hidden since those early years at school.
There is no quick summarised way to explain sean nós to you, I’m afraid. I’d need another article entirely for that (let me know if anyone wants it). But for all intents and purposes here: sean nós does not “fit” into sheet music. It’s a style where every single note is variable (within reason and in tune, of course), and you’re basically free (and, well, encouraged) to transpose certain parts of the music to a different key each time you sing depending on how you’re “feeling” it. Tempo is a variable too (slow vs fast), as is musicality (like speaking a bar instead of singing it, just ‘cause). It places an enormous amount of focus on the form, while the content of a song becomes an afterthought.
As you can probably guess, I learned my vocal range wasn’t just “stuck” within that one higher octave I kept using, but it could… well… travel places. I was able to reach lower notes I didn’t normally use, and it wasn’t hard, but it only happened occasionally. And perhaps this had something to do with the emotion I was feeling.
I became hooked, and would practise sean nós very often. It became easier and easier to improvise outside my comfort zone, but I still wouldn’t ever abandon the “tense” higher pitch when I sang mainstream styles. This breakthrough seemed to only happen in sean nós.
Until now.
Let me propose something crazy: what if chronic fear equals a chronic higher pitch?
And what if people can naturally pick up on that, but it’s so ingrained in human psyche that we feel unable to explain it? What if the reason other people would usually not take me seriously was a nonverbal cue in my voice, and not necessarily body language?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying sopranos are chronically scared while bass are fearless superheroes, lol. Don’t misconstrue it. What I AM saying is within each person’s vocal range, an abnormal shift in pitch for an extended amount of time could be a sign of a chronic emotional problem. Like staying “stuck” in a particular feeling without realising.
I don’t know for sure, it’s a theory. It just seems to explain my own story.
I’ve given you the background intel, anyway. There’s no shortage of evidence that I was brought up to fear my own caretaker, and felt utterly powerless to try and address the toxic dynamics. Maybe the fact I’d constantly second-guess myself worrying that NM could perhaps overreact to a random thing I said or did, translated into other areas of my life too. Maybe I stayed constantly alert for so long, trying not to be caught by surprise by her rage, that I simply taught my body to consider it the new “normal”.
Like the video above suggests, negative emotions have very specific cues in people’s voices. Dare I say, even in animal’s voices this could be true. When my cat is scared, he meows in a very high pitch, higher than any other he’d ever use. People are similar. When we scream in fear, high pitch. If we feel outraged and caught by surprise, high pitch. If we take offense at something and go like “what the actual fuck?!”, high pitch once again. All these feelings have a close relationship to fear. They all communicate you feel shaken and unsafe, and you need protection ASAP.
So perhaps if the fear is chronic, the change won’t be as striking, but it will still be there — and it will linger.
If that theory is correct, there is one simple (though not very easy) answer to a chronic higher pitch that came out of nowhere: ensuring you feel safe and truly relaxed, every time you use your voice. Or at least, most of the time.
