2023.03.19 – 0808 – The Causes of Vocal Tension
What Causes Tension
Nerves. Overwhelm. Anxiety. Excitement. The unknown. Panic. Being underprepared. Being worried about how you sound. Concerns about your message and the audience’s reception to it.
Any physical niggle can affect your voice. That’s anything from a paper cut to menstrual cramps, discomfort anywhere will cause ‘compensatory muscular tension’ and so mental distraction. Even if just a small part of your brain is dealing with the pain, possibly even if you are trying to block it out, it will affect your voice performance. The solution is obvious: deal with the source of the pain.
Physical tension can be a direct cause of you sounding different: text neck, baby carrying, shopping, pushing and driving can all cause muscular strains or stasis that will affect your breath – the very foundation of how you sound.
Tension pain may be treated with medication, which itself can cause a change in your voice: overly relaxing you, causing drowsiness or a lack of mucus. And a lack of mucus in your throat and mouth can lead to hoarseness and possible polyps
Tension can cause tiredness, both fatigue in your vocal instrumentation, but also in the rest of your ‘self’. Tiredness will affect your voice
Pain can cause you to be irritable or depressed, itself leading to stress and the possible use of medication… and so the spiral continues.
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