Man reveals his authentic voice after 30 years of changing it to please his mom
"Poor guy has been unintentionally using his customer service voice for decades."
A man revealing his natural voice.
Even though your voice is one of the defining aspects of your personality, acclaimed vocal coach Dr. Morton Cooper says most people are not speaking in their natural voices. They either altered their tone to sound more like someone they admire or developed their tone to oppose someone they don’t like.
Even though the vocal changes are mostly subconscious, over time speaking in the wrong register can cause burnout and leave someone exhausted after a long day. Timothy Daigle is going viral on TikTok for a video in which he admits that since puberty, he hasn’t been speaking in his natural voice. What’s interesting about the clip is that he begins the video speaking in his conversational voice and then reveals his actual speaking voice at the end.
@timmaydgl This was… an uncomfortable realization at first. Now, it’s just a fascinating piece of my personal history that I will DEFINITELY bring up in therapy one day when talking about how aggressively I will accomodate the people around me no matter how ridiculous their problem with me is.
Daigle reveals his real speaking voice
“What you’re hearing right now is what people would call my speaking voice,” Daigle said. “This is the voice that I have spoken to my children, my partners, my family with since I was maybe 14—15 years old. This voice does not bother me, but this voice is the voice I speak with for a reason.”
Daigle said that he began speaking in a higher register after his mom repeatedly criticized him for mumbling as a teenager. “That word ‘mumbling’ came out of her mouth at me in every conversation for years when I hit about 11, 12, 13 years old. So I would speak up. I would squeeze my voice,” he said.
After his wife asked him to speak in his natural voice, he relaxed his throat, “and let noise come out of my face,” and spoke in his “unaffected” voice, which was much deeper and smoother.
Folks in the comments thought his authentic voice sounded a lot more relaxed and natural than when he spoke in a higher register. “Your higher voice, actually gave me anxiety, your natural voice is so calming. I feel like you’re higher voice kinda almost put you on 10, so it put me on 10," Carlise wrote.
“Sir, I almost choked on my lunch when that silk came out,” Sloan wrote.
How to find your natural speaking voice
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To find your natural speech pitch, Ronja Petersen, a singing teacher on Singgeek, suggests starting by humming. "Most people, when they hum, when they're just like walking around your house, taking care of business, being happy, and most will actually hum right there on their natural speech pitch. If you start speaking around that pitch, you should find your natural speaking voice," Petersen said.
In a similar exercise, Dr. Morton Cooper says that we can find our natural speaking voice by responding to a question with a natural, "Mmm-hmmm." With lips closed, respond to the following statement with a spontaneous "mmm-hmmm." "Dinner is my favorite meal of the day."
It’s heartbreaking to consider that Daigle has spent all of his adult life speaking in a voice that isn’t natural, but his story also opens the door for the rest of us to think about the parts of our personality that are genuine and which ones were put on to please someone at some point in the past. We are all holding on to vestigial character and personality traits. My, how wonderful it would be if we could shed them and be one step closer to living a life of pure authenticity.