Let’s talk about the psychological effects of a vocal injury…or at least, the ones I experienced. The more I teach, the more I realize that how you feel or think psychologically about singing really is 90% of the battle of learning how to sing. And I know that about 99% of getting back into singing post-injury for me was a total mental game.
I had zero confidence in my singing at the time of my diagnosis. I was never able to trust my voice, and it had betrayed me to a unforgivable point at the Met competition. I pretty much wanted nothing to do with it. But after therapy, my voice mended its ways and I had to begin to trust it. Building that trust took a whole lot of time, and I still don’t trust it 100% of the time two years later. I had to remind myself over and over that my voice WAS healthy, my voice COULD be trusted. Thank God for a positive and encouraging teacher! Positive encouragement isn’t just blowing smoke up the butts of those of us with injury. It’s a vital part of our recovery!
I had zero confidence in my singing at the time of my diagnosis. I was never able to trust my voice, and it had betrayed me to a unforgivable point at the Met competition. I pretty much wanted nothing to do with it. But after therapy, my voice mended its ways and I had to begin to trust it. Building that trust took a whole lot of time, and I still don’t trust it 100% of the time two years later. I had to remind myself over and over that my voice WAS healthy, my voice COULD be trusted. Thank God for a positive and encouraging teacher! Positive encouragement isn’t just blowing smoke up the butts of those of us with injury. It’s a vital part of our recovery!
About five months after my injury, I found I was constantly getting down on myself for still not getting my technique right. My main problem I kept thinking was, “I know my voice was healthy, so it just should work, right?” Getting my larynx in the right position was a struggle. Keeping my pharyngeal space “open” was a struggle (still kinda is sometimes). I failed over and over again to get things right for years, and now that my fundamental problem was healed, I was expecting to not fail at all. Yet there I was, still “placing my sound” by tweaking my throat into funny ways. My tongue was still bunching, and my jaw was still tight. My confidence when performing was shot, because I knew my technique wouldn’t be perfect. Ten years of always hitting a developmental wall had made me extremely impatient to get to a good place with my singing and my technique…never mind that almost no one sings with perfect technique all of the time and that it takes most people years to get close enough to “perfect” to be world class.
Some singers have great little mottos they say to themselves before they sing such as: “This performance is going to be so fun” or “Please let my performance touch someone out there.” And other singers have so much confidence or experience that they don’t even need silly little mottos. They just do it. Know what I would think before a performance? “Please, just let my voice work!” That’s what I would think. You know how you’re not supposed to think about technique when you perform? How it’s supposed to be on auto-pilot so that you can think about your character, emotions, musicality…? Yeah, well, that still wasn’t happening for me. It wasn’t happening because I didn’t know how to trust my voice. I still expected it to be a traitor. It also wasn’t happening because I still felt like a failure for not being able to figure out the right way to sing, even though my voice was better. Never mind that it takes most people a few years to figure it out anyway. Never mind that I was basically starting at square one after the injury, so it would take time. I wanted my voice to work now!
You know what helped with my confidence? Improving and solidifying my technique. That allowed me to trust my voice because good technique made it reliable. I really think that's one thing the "close to natural" talents out there in the operatic world have over those of us who struggle: They have trust in a voice that is 100% reliable. That takes a lot of the worry off the table. I never realized how much pressure it is to sing with an unreliable voice until my voice became reliable. It's such a revelation! And the exhilaration of being able to finally, finally truly make music with my voice was so completely worth the struggle...I cannot even being to tell you!
Know what kept me going so that I would finally feel like I could use my voice to make music? Positive encouragement from my teacher. So, so vital to healing the psychological hurt I had experienced with my injury. Being reminded of how far I had come and being reminded to be patient were such gifts during this time. I was so used to being that girl with “a nice voice with problems” that I would fall back into that crippling mental state of always being that girl with the vocal issues. And you simply cannot learn how to sing well if you’re crippled by negative labels and doubts, especially when those labels don’t apply to you anymore.
Another vital thing I did was change my moto before singing. Instead of “I hope my voice works,” I started to say “My voice does work and will work, even if my technique is not perfect just yet.” That really helped me when it came down to actually performing on my not-so-perfect technique with my healed-up voice. I still got nervous as heck, but if it didn’t go perfectly, I was at least able to laugh it off as a fluke rather than as a sign of my incompetence. Might seem like a little thing, but it was a big step in the right direction.
*Voice teachers, don’t babysit your singers or coddle them, but for your student's sake try to learn when they need some encouragement. Students who sang on an injury, even if for a short amount of time, are going to need a lot of encouragement to get through the trauma. And if encouragement doesn't seem to be cutting it, send us to a counselor. The psychological impacts of vocal injury really should not be ignored or belittled. But some of us were just put in the wrong “box” as a young singer, and we need someone to take the lid off for us before we can make any progress.
Some singers have great little mottos they say to themselves before they sing such as: “This performance is going to be so fun” or “Please let my performance touch someone out there.” And other singers have so much confidence or experience that they don’t even need silly little mottos. They just do it. Know what I would think before a performance? “Please, just let my voice work!” That’s what I would think. You know how you’re not supposed to think about technique when you perform? How it’s supposed to be on auto-pilot so that you can think about your character, emotions, musicality…? Yeah, well, that still wasn’t happening for me. It wasn’t happening because I didn’t know how to trust my voice. I still expected it to be a traitor. It also wasn’t happening because I still felt like a failure for not being able to figure out the right way to sing, even though my voice was better. Never mind that it takes most people a few years to figure it out anyway. Never mind that I was basically starting at square one after the injury, so it would take time. I wanted my voice to work now!
You know what helped with my confidence? Improving and solidifying my technique. That allowed me to trust my voice because good technique made it reliable. I really think that's one thing the "close to natural" talents out there in the operatic world have over those of us who struggle: They have trust in a voice that is 100% reliable. That takes a lot of the worry off the table. I never realized how much pressure it is to sing with an unreliable voice until my voice became reliable. It's such a revelation! And the exhilaration of being able to finally, finally truly make music with my voice was so completely worth the struggle...I cannot even being to tell you!
Know what kept me going so that I would finally feel like I could use my voice to make music? Positive encouragement from my teacher. So, so vital to healing the psychological hurt I had experienced with my injury. Being reminded of how far I had come and being reminded to be patient were such gifts during this time. I was so used to being that girl with “a nice voice with problems” that I would fall back into that crippling mental state of always being that girl with the vocal issues. And you simply cannot learn how to sing well if you’re crippled by negative labels and doubts, especially when those labels don’t apply to you anymore.
Another vital thing I did was change my moto before singing. Instead of “I hope my voice works,” I started to say “My voice does work and will work, even if my technique is not perfect just yet.” That really helped me when it came down to actually performing on my not-so-perfect technique with my healed-up voice. I still got nervous as heck, but if it didn’t go perfectly, I was at least able to laugh it off as a fluke rather than as a sign of my incompetence. Might seem like a little thing, but it was a big step in the right direction.
*Voice teachers, don’t babysit your singers or coddle them, but for your student's sake try to learn when they need some encouragement. Students who sang on an injury, even if for a short amount of time, are going to need a lot of encouragement to get through the trauma. And if encouragement doesn't seem to be cutting it, send us to a counselor. The psychological impacts of vocal injury really should not be ignored or belittled. But some of us were just put in the wrong “box” as a young singer, and we need someone to take the lid off for us before we can make any progress.
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