Vocally Speaking: "Inner Bomb Detonation"… How Dangerous or perhaps, even Beneficial could that be?

Vocal damage hurts, but you don’t have to.

It could be devastating when the vocal injury occurs for both speakers and singers. Interestingly enough, for speakers, it appears to be even more tragic, as they are absolutely unaware of that occurrence.

While overusing and abusing their voice, they have no idea that one day, it can burst on them. They continue pushing and pulling until their voice literally “pops” (as had been literally described by one of my voice repair clients) and then becomes hardly usable. 

Clearly, the above had not happened at that moment; The, so to speak, ‘stage’ (the precedent) had gotten pre-set for some time. Those voice-injured singers/speakers were (almost literally) ‘developing and gradually building a bomb’, and it was only a matter of time before the now-ready 'bomb’ would eventually detonate.  

Given the above, needless to say, regardless, of whether they were amateur or professional speakers, they were sensing the change in the delivery of their voice. But the majority of them chose to ignore it and, sometimes, for prolonged periods of time. So they continued pushing their voice to the max until they could not push it anymore. 

In fact, the singers, as opposed to speakers,  are evidently much more aware of the condition of their voices. The symptoms of hoarseness, loss of tone and loss of range are much more obvious and pronounced to singers than to those people who use their voices just for speaking. Both categories, however, have that ‘vocal bomb’ set on a ‘timer’, which, if not ‘detonated’ rather sooner than later, may just ‘explode’.

For speakers, it could turn to what is called muscle tension dysphonia, or worst of all, even spasmodic dysphonia.

In the Spasmodic Dysphonia condition (SD), the voice starts to spasm involuntarily; and treating this condition is extremely difficult, but not necessarily impossible if it is still in the mild stage. Peculiar enough, the singers are more rarely succumbed to dysphonia, especially the spasmodic kind. 

Singers are more so susceptible to the growth on their vocal cords and throat. They very often acquire vocal cord lesions, vocal cord and throat cysts, polyps and nodules... 

The latter is caused by the singer’s voice being drawn in the lower than normal throat position; and thus it easily meets the gastric acid, which begins to burn one’s vocal cords, and sometimes quite severely. All of those conditions for speakers and singers must be addressed as soon as they are noticed.

Remember, the bomb on a timer is ticking... 

And the longer it waits to “detonate”, the more probable that, when it finally "explodes", the voice condition might become beyond repair – Surgically or Non-Surgically. 

In fact, the process of, so to speak, “detonation”, could be quite detrimental.

Now is your choice: To try first the non-surgical route, or chose the invasive procedures. 

If you chose the surgical route, please be advised that the surgical interference may leave scar tissue, just like in the case of Julie Andrews, who was never able to regain her singing career and who, for a while, after the surgery, also had difficulties even with speech for some time.

Not to mention Joan Rivers who had lost her life during a vocal operation.

However, please be advised that the Non-Surgical endeavour is also very tasking, as it involves a lot of effort on both ends – The recipient and the voice specialist. 

Usually, there are a lot of emotions flying around – (frustration, tears, laughter, sadness and happiness) quite often present during the Non-Surgical process.

I said many times that the voice is the identification and a reflection of the state of one’s being. Naturally, all the feelings like fear, frustration and overall depression, come to the surface during the restoration of the person’s voice.

So, while holistically approaching it, the voice specialist, like myself, has to take all of those feelings into consideration and act accordingly and with absolute confidence. 

In fact, my recent US Voice Repair client said that my confidence in what I am doing is clearly unbeatable, and that helped him a great deal.

Therefore, as I also said many times before, the approach to voice mechanics, voice issues and voice problems should be completely holistic, without which, the success of Non-Surgical voice restoration is virtually impossible and, thus, could be the least to say harmful, if approached otherwise.