First of all, if you’re experiencing any of these things, don’t be stubborn like me. Go to an ENT immediately. I put it off for way too long, which only made my stress levels go through the roof. I was so convinced they were going to tell me I had to stop working that I just avoided it. Yeah, I know, pretty dumb.
I finally decided I couldn’t put it off any longer. I scheduled my appointment. Really long story short, I had this very common vocal disorder called Muscle Tension Dysphonia. I’ll let you do some internet research on that, but the bottom line is, I was speaking with so much tension the muscles around my larynx were acting like a cage. I learned this way of speaking somewhere along the way. Likely a combination of speaking to huge groups of people at my last job and, interestingly enough, emotional distress. Your emotions can have a huge impact on your voice. So, yay therapy!
I’ve now been going to a speech therapist regularly to resolve this issue. I’ve learned some great massage techniques to release vocal tension before I begin recording and I wanted to pass some of these on to you in this week’s Working Wednesday video.
Here’s the overall lesson: if something doesn’t feel right, get it checked out! No need to suffer in silence.