Unresolved Anger and Singing Can Break Your Voice

But it doesn’t have to.

There have been times in my life when a close trusted friend or family member said or did something that shattered my world and betrayed my trust, hurting  me deeply, and I have allowed anger to make me do really really dumb things with my voice.

They broke my heart so I wanted to break theirs.  It’s a normal human emotion, but it is unbelievably destructive, to everyone, but most importantly, it is destructive to YOU because, to be honest, the people who hurt you often do not care how their unfaithfulness, or stubbornness, cruelty, mocking, meanness, dishonesty and all other manner of bad behavior affects you.

So don’t become like them by letting anger make you do dumb things with your voice, like yell at them, scream at them, etc.

In other words, don’t sink down to the level of their immaturity and cowardliness because .aAnger and singing combined can mess you up big time..

Instead, learn and use solid vocal techniques to protect yourself from yourself!

Here’s the thing we all need to understand when we are angry and singing.

Every feeling that you have – whether it’s a fantastic feeling or a lousy feeling – affects your voice in some pretty amazing ways.

If it’s feeling of elation:

• you feel great
• everything is going right
• you have all this energy
• you’re on top of the world
• everyone is treating you well….it is all reflected in your voice.  Singing is not a problem and your voice has all this strength, all this energy, all this power behind it.

Then there’s the opposite side of the spectrum when like pretty much sucks:

• Nothing goes right
• People treat you badly
• You have trouble with your family members, a parent or a sibling
• A teacher at school or friend snaps at you unfairly
• Your child or spouse yell at you for no reason
• Someone you trust spreads lies about you
• A co-worker ridicules you in front of your boss or sabotages you behind your back
• You name it….all of these things are reflected in your voice and when things are not going well, it exhausts you, it drains energy from you because the energy you need to sing well has to go to shore up your emotions when you’ve been hurt and respond in angry

When anger hits you, BAM!, whether someone provoked you or you just got out of control and you provoked someone else, it doesn’t matter.  The effects are the same.

Adrenaline starts racing through your body in excess amounts and so you get more angry or you yell hurtful things at the other person.  Or if you are angry with yourself, you silently yell hurtful things at yourself.

And it takes a long time for the adrenaline to leave your body, to get out of your system.

So, when you have a feeling of anger or frustration, hurt or loneliness, sadness because people do not understand or respect you, or they don’t value your perspective enough to listen to you, or maybe they accuse you of always trying to get attention, or being lazy, or stupid, your body has to try and balance out the chemicals that are released when you react to any of these things, or any of the gazillion other things that people do to one another that are nasty and cruel, or at best careless.

And that takes a lot of energy.

In fact, it takes so much energy that sometimes you will simply push down the feelings and force yourself to go on, never truly dealing with the core issues that spark anger.

The problem is this:  if you do not resolve the feelings, they will settle down into your voice and stay there, tightening your throat and tongue muscles and gradually causing you to speak and sing with so much tension that the natural beauty of your voice simply cannot get out.

In other words, feeling anger and singing at the same time without knowing what to do with the muscles around your vocal cords can truly mess you up and break your voice in the long run.

One of the best things you can do to help yourself prevent the short term and long term damage that comes from using your voice in anger is to use singing voice breathing exercises.

No kidding!

Especially use the Slow Leaky Tire coupled with a deep sounding sigh when you let out your voice.

Once you start paying very close attention to what your voice is doing in your throat area, and start the sound of your voice in a way that will produce freedom in your throat and in the long term a very powerful voice, you will begin to realize that no one has power over your voice.

Not even your mother!

What do you think?  Leave your comments and questions below.