As a voice coach for women, I often hear, “How can I love my voice, if I don’t even like it?”
Learning to embrace your voice can be a slow process. You’ll need to take small steps, accept your current habits, and learn key skills to communicate more comfortably. I compare it to body acceptance; we often need to challenge negative beliefs about our body to feel more comfortable in our own skin, and the same is true of our voices. There is also no one-size-fits-all solution since our voices change throughout our lives.
I used to feel self-conscious about my own voice. I have a loud, sing-song voice, that I inherited from my large Irish-American family. As a child I could get teased for being “too loud” and “too much”.
“Good student, but talks too much in class” was a common comment on my school report cards.
It wasn’t that I talked too much, well, maybe just a little, but I was so LOUD when I …