The way you sound in your head

[AeroZeppelin92]

So, I'm approaching my 6 months on T mark this weekend, and I have a strange thing I experience and I'm curious if this happens to others of you as well.
People often comment on how deep my voice has gotten etc, especially old friends who live far away now and don't see me often. The thing is, I feel like the voice in my head still sounds like my former self. For instance, when speaking to someone, you're not really listening to yourself as you know what you're saying, and I hear myself the same. When I hear myself on videos or recordings, I'm like oh, yea, my voice is lower. It's kind of hard to explain but basicay I just don't hear myself in my head with a low voice and it makes me self conscious sometimes because I think my voice is higher than it actually is.
Anyone else experience this?

[Kreuzfidel]

I still do and I'm over 3 years on T.

I read an article online about how our voices tend to sound more high-pitched in our heads due to the conduction of sound through our skulls and the various tissues and bones in our ears.  You're definitely not alone - I often think my recorded voice sounds like a completely different person to the way I hear myself!

[xKadaBear]

I'm a little over a year on T and I still hear my voice as I did pre-T, so you're definitely not alone!

[darkblade]

I read an article online about how our voices tend to sound more high-pitched in our heads due to the conduction of sound through our skulls and the various tissues and bones in our ears.

Actually, because of bone conduction our voices sound deeper in our heads than they actually are. It's interesting to me that the voice you guys hear in your heads isn't changing, I wonder whether that's purely psychological or partly biological. Wonder whether cis guys experience a similar thing after puberty?

[Algernon]

I too have noticed this interesting phenomenon—I haven't started T yet and used to have bad dysphoria about my voice, which sounds high and feminine to me. But recordings of it showed that it's actually quite low, as 'deep' as an unbroken voice can get.

[Ptero]

That's weird to me because I'm absolutely not on T and due to my physiology I have quite a high voice (more or less soprano, even if I'm not a singer). But I totally can hear when I sound lower (like when I'm sick, when I miss sleep, when I abused smoking the day before, or when I speak in a lower register on purpose).
But it perhaps has to do with the fact I'm a musician.
Ever thought to practice singing ? would perhaps make you more conscious of how low your voice is by forcing you to listen to the pitch of your voice...

[Dex]

I have noticed that too. I am 14 months on T now and my voice is undoubtably male. I have not been misread as female on the phone (even before giving my name) for probably the last 8 months. There were maybe one or two times (most noticeably at about 6 months) where I woke up one day not recognizing my voice lol. But I do still very much hear my old voice in my head. When I hear it recorded, I am always surprised at how deep it sounds. I have also wondered though how much of it is psychological vs biological. I do think some of it is me second guessing how far I've come from the awkward person I was before. But it is interesting that I'm not the only one who experiences this

[palexander]

So, I'm approaching my 6 months on T mark this weekend, and I have a strange thing I experience and I'm curious if this happens to others of you as well.
People often comment on how deep my voice has gotten etc, especially old friends who live far away now and don't see me often. The thing is, I feel like the voice in my head still sounds like my former self. For instance, when speaking to someone, you're not really listening to yourself as you know what you're saying, and I hear myself the same. When I hear myself on videos or recordings, I'm like oh, yea, my voice is lower. It's kind of hard to explain but basicay I just don't hear myself in my head with a low voice and it makes me self conscious sometimes because I think my voice is higher than it actually is.
Anyone else experience this?

3 months on t and i definitely feel like that. some days i have days where i'm really dysphoric and i say "my voice hasn't changed at all, i'm stupid to think it's possible" around that time my girlfriend and mom basically tell me to get my sh*t together and i am changing. at times i'll random talk or sing to myself and i can tell there's more depth so it's odd to me. i got so used to haven't a voice with not /as/ much depth and now there is.. it's weird.

[jamesdoran]

I'm also approaching 6 months on T and I often perceive my voice as high pitched, even though it's dropped an octave and I never get misgendered anymore.


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[aleon515]

I don't think I sound as low in my head. I have a very low voice. However, it does surprise me when I hear my older videos.

--Jay

[Tossu-sama]

Two years and counting and I still have this. Sometimes I feel like nothing's happened to my voice but when I hear it recorded, it's clearly a lot lower and definetly in the male range, and people have said it's much lower than before.
I get these feelings mostly when I'm around other guys and their voices sound much lower than mine but apparently that's not the case, lol.

It's hard to tell the difference since one hears their own voice daily so the change isn't so clear. My fiancée couldn't comment on the matter either since she hears my voice everyday, too.

[MrJ]

I'm a musician and an actor/singer and I'm very familiar with my new voice after 4 years on T, but I still hear my old voice in my head. People are always telling me I have a unique voice (usually in a good way) but to me I just hear girl.

[Jigsaw.]

I dont see why your internal voice would change. T voice change is due to change in vocal cords. The voice in your head has nothing to do with vocal cords so I see no reason why it would change due to T. Pretty sure mine is the same as it was while my voice is noticably different, even just talking myself Im aware it is much lower than it was and it was relatively low pre-T. My voice is certainly lower than it is in my head but my inner isnt exactly high, its just different to my actual voice. Pretty sure its normal. Who ever hears themself recorded and thinks it sounds like them? Its always omg I sound like that??? Its normal to sound different to yourself in your head to how you actually sound. I dont see why adding T would make any difference, we cant really control what our inner voice sounds like. But good news is if you dont like it/think it sounds high, your actual voice isnt like that anyway

Always best to document your transition as it can be hard to see any change in yourself as it can all be so gradual. Its when I look back at old pics and listen to old recordings I see just how far I've come, otherwise I would think not much had really changed. Take regular pictures, make regular recordings and compare them. You will see/hear a change. But yeah I dont think we can change the voice in our head. Whatever it is controlled by likely isnt hormonal

[Felix]

I've been on T for at least 3 years, and I still feel like I talk like a sissy (or a kid or a girl) unless I consciously remind myself that my voice has dropped. It sounds like you've already tried it, but one thing that worked really well for me was to listen to recordings of my voice. My voice in reality is quite nice, and deeper than lots of cisguys I respect. Yours probably is too.

It takes practice to really feel like we are the people we are really becoming with transition.

[aleon515]

This is a VERY interesting post. I would say LOGICALLY it would not! But, now there may be differences here, but I could tell you that my inner voice is alto. Now how do I know this since it is "inner". Well I don't actually. My inner voice is actually younger, I believe. And how do I know that? Strange. I suppose you develop it sometime in adolescence, when you become more self-aware. I imagine children have inner voices as well. But never asked and don't recall.

Actually an interesting post too. I don't believe I have ever seen this come up before.

--Jay

I dont see why your internal voice would change. T voice change is due to change in vocal cords. The voice in your head has nothing to do with vocal cords so I see no reason why it would change due to T. Pretty sure mine is the same as it was while my voice is noticably different, even just talking myself Im aware it is much lower than it was and it was relatively low pre-T. My voice is certainly lower than it is in my head but my inner isnt exactly high, its just different to my actual voice. Pretty sure its normal. Who ever hears themself recorded and thinks it sounds like them? Its always omg I sound like that??? Its normal to sound different to yourself in your head to how you actually sound. I dont see why adding T would make any difference, we cant really control what our inner voice sounds like. But good news is if you dont like it/think it sounds high, your actual voice isnt like that anyway

[AeroZeppelin92]

I realize logically your inner voice wouldn't change due to testosterone. But it's not something I ever expected or heard about having to deal with prior to starting T, even after years of reading about the effects/ personal experiences before deciding to transition. Its very weird for me. Yes, i've been recording my voice every two weeks or so since I've started, as well as taking pictures, etc. I know my voice has changed, but when talking to others day to day I don't hear the change in my voice. You don't really listen to yourself when you talk because you know what you're saying in your head, and in my head I still sound squeaky. If it wasn't for listening to recordings of my voice to reassure me, I'm pretty certain I'd be convinced my voice hadn't changed at all.

[darkblade]

The voice you hear in your head when you're speaking is the synthesized product of both your voice as others percieve it, and vibrations sent from your vocal cords to your ears through bone conduction. And this voice is deeper than one's actual voice. (More info here http://gizmodo.com/why-your-voice-sounds-different-inside-your-head-1620981647)

From the basic science that I know, the voice you hear should definitely change. I'm inclined to believe that the phenomenon you all experience is either psychological, or that something odd happens with the vocal cords when you go on T. Perhaps since the change is gradual your mind doesn't percieve it as a change?

[youngbuck]

I guess I'm an odd one out who doesn't have this disconnect; pre-T, I actually used to think my voice sounded better and deeper than it was, so I'd be surprised and disappointed when I heard recordings. I will say it took a few months for my perception to match reality when my voice was initially changing, and there are still times I'm pleasantly surprised to hear it played back. But on the whole, I sound like I expect to sound.

[spacerace]

I first really noticed in my head that my voice was actually getting deeper when I sneezed one day and the resulting achoo did not sound like a girl sneeze anymore.

[Tysilio]

We seem to be talking about two different "inner voices." First, the way our actual speaking voices sound to us, and second, the inner voice we "hear" when we think -- the one that never makes it to the outside world.

As to the first, I was astonished, way back in the dawn of time when I first heard a recording of my voice, at how low it actually was. It didn't sound that way to me at all. Now, not quite a year on T, my voice has changed a lot -- it's much deeper and more resonant, and friends who haven't seen/heard me in a while say "Wow!". It sounds really different to me, but a big part of that isn't the pitch as such, but the feeling of  it resonating in my chest (very cool!). One of these days I'll have to make a recording and find out what it actually sounds like.

The "voice" I hear internally, when I'm having coherent thoughts, hasn't changed at all, and I wish it would. I have no idea whether it will change over time, but it seems as if it should.

I wonder how this relates to other ways we experience ourselves which can be quite different from reality: for instance the way our body images can vary from how we actually look: some people with anorexia experience themselves as fat, no matter how thin they actually are. When I go bald, will I still experience myself as having hair?