Changes and Self-Perception Weirdness

[BunnyBee]

So I was going through some old files on my computer tonight and I came across a folder with voice recordings I made back very early on in my transition.  So of course out of total morbid curiosity I started listening to them and I was SHOCKED by what I heard, so much so that I'm sitting here right now just, well slightly stunned.  Basically two things boggle my mind about it.

The first thing, in listening to the recordings especially from 2009, which was the year I stared transition, I hear a MAN behind that voice.  Yes it's deep and low and has very masculine speech patterns, those things I would expect, I mean I was just starting out after all, but the thing that just rocks my world is that, beyond those technical things, the way I can hear language was being formed in my mind and how those thoughts were being expressed and even the way my mind was processing thought, all of those things were completely MALE!  I know that's me speaking in those recordings, I remember making them, but I hear a different PERSON talking, not me.  Not only that, if somebody gave me one of those mp3s and asked me how I felt about their voice, well I mean I would be nice and say you need to work on that some more but it's a good start, but I would actually secretly be thinking... oh my gosh I'm so sorry that you have gender dysphoria, transition is going to be so hard for you because I can tell you have a man's mind.  Ohh, you will have such a hard time fitting into the world as a woman.  Maybe I would cluck my tongue a few times... Now, I have to rethink that judgy nature of mine.  My mind somehow does not work like it apparently used to, it doesn't processs things the same way, and I certainly don't express myself how I used to.  I use such different language now than I did then.  The realization that my mind actually thinks, processes thought, in a different way than it used to is really wild to me.  It makes me feel like I'm a completely different person than before, like literally, and that is weird to think of.  It is astounding how much can change, and if you don't keep record of it like this you'll never even notice.  Well, if you are like me you won't, cause I surely didn't.

The second thing leaving me kind of disturbed is that I can tell from some of the things I was saying in those awful recordings that I actually thought my voice sounded alright, like I knew there were some issues that needed to be fixed, but I thought that maybe, just maybe it sounded good enough to get by.  Well, guess what?  I think that EXACT same thing about my voice now!  Yet it sounds so verrrry different.  So, I am well aware that I am terrible at evaluating myself at anything, looks or voice or anything else, but gosh, I don't think I can trust ANYTHING I think about myself now.  Especially my voice.

People are nice and don't say too much about how I sound out there in the world, well they say nothing really, but still I have to just wonder if in a few years I'll hear recordings of myself from this year and think, dear lord did I really sound that horrible???

It's nice to know I've come so far, but still I feel like I can't really trust my own perception of myself and that makes me feel really self-conscious.

So, has anybody else had a similar experience?  Did you feel you learned anything from it?

[Elspeth]

I've always been hypercritical of myself, to the point that I will often do things to avoid seeing my own work... but I think that's actually fairly common.

I forget the exact details, and it's too late right now to go looking for them, but people literally do become new people, in the sense that the cells three months from now will not be the same cells from three months (or whatever the actual cycle is) earlier. And what we learn and do affects us greatly as well. I especially hate hearing my voice, though I tend to feel like the language I use is not "male" per se. But assuming I can find and afford HRT and the necessary supports to do it relatively safely, now that I have no remaining excuses, I do expect to see a progression, and one that will almost certainly be affected greatly by the hormonal changes I hope will be reality for me one day soon.

I look at transition videos on YouTube, for instance, and am stunned at how people I would never have guessed could transition so well, manage to transform so completely over the course of a few years, or in some cases even less than a year on HRT.

The studies seem to suggest that there are brain differences even before HRT, but between practice and daily living, and the effects of hormones, there is no substitute for time, habit, and their ability to change us, sometimes profoundly.

I have been wondering lately, whether at least some part of my resistance to promoting my work as a writer doesn't boil down to my unwillingness to allow something to go out to the world that comes from a self that I regard as inauthentic and bound by circumstance and experiences that I wouldn't wish on anyone else? The material will be there to evaluate; I'm fairly obsessive about keeping hard copy and archival dupes of most anything I think might have some future value. But until I feel like myself, unless I become extremely desperate, I'm unlikely to seek to promote any of it.

[BunnyBee]

It's difficult for me because I never wanted to become somebody different by going through this process, I just wanted to finally be myself.  Yet, I listen to that person in the recording and it's totally foreign, somebody else... certainly not me.  It weirds me out quite a bit.

[Elspeth]

It's difficult for me because I never wanted to become somebody different by going through this process, I just wanted to finally be myself.  Yet, I listen to that person in the recording and it's totally foreign, somebody else... certainly not me.  It weirds me out quite a bit.

I've finally started working on voice (when I should have done it a long time ago).  Okay, I did once go to a drag bar and thought I had enough of a voice to not be completely self-embarrassing, and nobody there seemed to be shouting "you're a fake/freak/yaddayadda." It was actually a pretty affirming experience, but it also kicked off some other kidney or maybe liver issues... at any rate, I panicked at a time when I was on some drugs that I definitely was not supposed to combine with alcohol. In any case, I never went back. Maybe I was afraid then that I might find someone, at a time when I still was not ready to let go of my relationship with my ex, even though the divorce had been final for months?

Maybe in another week I'll post an "air check" to share my still minimal voice progress? My ultimate goal right now is to be able to do a Jodi Foster line from Contact: "What, me! Confrontational? What do you mean by that?" without sinking into a male register.

But the bottom line for me has been since forever to realize that the voice I could hear, and the image I saw in the mirror were not me. Not the me I wished I was, at least. To some extent I don't expect that to change, since there are features that mark me as trans, no matter how successfully I manage to relearn, retrain or rehormone my body.

Hopefully I will eventually learn not to be quite so hard on myself, or to focus on those things that give me peace of mind and are a reflection of who I am, and who I have always longed to be more fully, more openly.  I changed sigs recently, but the old one from Anne Lamott about how perfectionism can make you crazy all your life is a mantra I need to repeat to myself more or less daily, at a minimum.

[BunnyBee]

You know, I just had this thought, that person in those recordings was still 100% me, even if unrecognizable to me now.  Her ideal self was still the same as mine, but not only was she stuck inside a shell that was so far away from looking correct, and not only was her voice so very wrong, but even her thought processes and the way she used language was so wrong for her.  No WONDER she was so uncomfortable and felt like dying everyday.

And yes I did just talk about myself in the third person haha.  That is such a strange thing for me to have done, wow..

Anyway, I'm still a ways off from my ideal self, for sure, but I am closer than I ever thought I could be, even on such an abstruse level as thought process, so no wonder I feel so much better about life now.

I know that you see things that you feel will always mark you as trans, but you may be surprised at how far you can come by just taking steps in the right direction.  YMMV of course, but I personally have experienced such a profound change and I feel like I'm just getting started.

[suzifrommd]

So, has anybody else had a similar experience?  Did you feel you learned anything from it?

Yes. I'm going through that now. I think my voice passes but then other people point stuff out and I realize it doesn't. Most people are polite, so it's hard to get accurate feedback.

I am utterly incapable of deciding whether my own voice passes. It doesn't help that for some reason I am hyperhyperhyper sensitive about what people say about my voice (but not about anything else. Make a suggestion about my clothes, makeup, etc., I'll thank you for it. But say something about my voice, I'll disintegrate.)

OTOH it matches the rest of me, which doesn't pass either.

[RachelH]

And yes I did just talk about myself in the third person haha.  That is such a strange thing for me to have done, wow..

Not that strange, I do it all the time... especially if I am talking about something "he" did in the past, rather then me!  OK maybe it is slightly weird 

[Lady_Oracle]

Funny I was going through some old recordings of mine too! It is strange but rewarding though. It took me about a year and a half of training. I finally have a women's voice. It's extremely relieving but I do keep my other voice in check too. I use it for singing. Lately I've been able to keep a higher pitch. So I'm hoping by this time next year I'll be able to sing in a female range.