Everyone hears your voice the way the recording does. Only you get the other version. Perspective works like that.

REFLECTION

WHAT THIS MEANS

Your voice reaches you through the bones of your skull as well as through the air, which is why playback always sounds wrong and slightly thin. Everybody else has only heard the recorded version and finds it entirely normal. You are the only person for whom there is a discrepancy, and your discomfort is about a mismatch rather than a flaw.

Get used to it rather than avoiding it. Record a minute of yourself reading something this week and listen back twice, because the second time is far less painful. If you have to speak or present soon, do that a few times and the strangeness stops being a distraction.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

When did you first hear yourself the way everyone else always had?

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