Vocal Disorder, Attachment, Self & Shame

Introduction.

The field of ecology and vocal care is not a stranger to ways that psychology can upset the voice.

Divorces, personal losses, natural disasters, distress in life comes through in the way we express ourselves.

When duress is great enough, we might even fall mute, unable to utter without a single clear physiological cause.

This makes it challenging, of course, as is always the case.

For a holistic systems thinking approach is necessary to pinpoint the mental hang-up causing vocal disorder, which is not what Western medicine deals with.

All in all, it can leave vocal professionals, such as singers or podcasters, shit out of luck, which doubles back on that distress measure.

Emotional states have long been implicated in vocalization challenges and changes.

Anger makes the voice punchy.

Sweetness and care are associated with slow and agile mouth movements.

Letdown is expressed with gradual softening.

And as vocal psychotherapist Diane Austin observes, if one's needs and feelings remain unmet, the voice can become inaudible, tense, breathy, or simply untrue.

One might say that it becomes inauthentic.

While feelings unquestionably affect voice, we have to wonder if there is a traceable pathway from one to the next.

is physiology affected by psychology, which then changes vocal output.

This would be highly applicable and potentially beneficial to study in professional vocalizers whose identity and often livelihood is linked to vocal control and capacity as their awareness of voice is internally heightened and externally mediated under these conditions.

Therefore, the authors of this paper conducted two studies using singers.

First, asking how attachment and voice are related.

Secondly, looking at psychological characteristics of those attachment styles as they might affect voice, i.e. shame and guilt.

Let's talk background information on attachment, trauma, shame, and physiology before we get into the study.