I confess that I never stopped to pay attention to my deaf voice. As far as I’m concerned, she’s normal. I’ve never had speech therapy. A few days ago, I published two videos on my other blog, the
Sweetest Person
and I was a bit shocked by some of the hatefulcomments I received – and obviously I didn’t approve them, because they were offensive. People saying my voice was awful, this and that. How evil!
Here’s the video:
I asked speech therapist Michele Vargas Garcia to write a little about it. Michele is knowledgeable because she actively participated in my hearing aid fitting and knows my voice well:
About my deaf voice
“Individuals with hearing loss are very likely to deviate from the normal voice pattern. This is directly related to the degree and type of hearing loss. The hearing-impaired person’s voice tends to be more nasalized (with a focus of resonance in the nose) due to reduced feedback (perception) of their own voice. This makes the voice deeper (thicker) and lower (thinner). The vocal quality can have characteristics such as breathiness, the articulation can be imprecise, the intensity, rhythm and intonation can be inadequate due to the difficulty of controlling all of this, because you can’ t hear it precisely. The voice of a person with hearing loss becomes deeper, “it sounds like it’s coming out of their nose”.
Paula’s voice would be thinner and higher if she didn’t have hearing loss. The voice becomes less feminine, sounding a little more aggressive and with less intonation. Paula’s voice is very good considering the degree and time of her hearing loss. If we were to take into account the time of the loss, she would have much more difficulty articulating.“
Many readers commented that they imagined my voice to be completely different, thin and meek. And then I discover that I have the voice of Cid Moreira. Pelamordedeuss!!! (pause to imagine myself presenting Jornal Nacional, or is it Fantástico?) 🙂
I think this episode illustrates the fact that deafness is an invisible disability. People look at you, see nothing wrong and assume you’re ‘normal’ (quotation marks because normal is the most useless concept there is, I think). The social impact of deafness is what makes any hearing-impaired person panic. The ‘normal’ feel uncomfortable when they notice the ‘different’ and the details that make them different.
We’re struggling to hear our own voices and be able to speak, and others are annoyed by the beauty or ugliness of our voices. That’s why I believe that you can only be happy being deaf if you learn not to take it personally. My voice is strange, and so what? I don’t have the voice of Celine Dion or some delicate actress, am I going to lose sleep over it? No. My focus is always on the positive.
But I am flesh and blood. I was quite shocked by some of the rudeness. I even went around asking everyone close to me if my voice was that terrible. I’ve even started to consider having a few sessions of speech therapy to see what it’s like and if it would help me in any way.
I’m not the kind of ‘different’ person who stops their life in a desperate attempt to fit in and please the ‘normals’. Not at all. But I’m intrigued by the subject and I’m going to try to find out what good speech therapy could do for me. Just for the record, my voice doesn’t bother me and it doesn’t bother the people around me.
If anyone is interested, I found a very educational link:
“Clearing up myths about hearing loss”.
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