Talking

People have trouble hearing me because my voice can be low-toned.  When people ask me to speak up, I tend to react defensively as if its a personal atttack.  How should I react, and how do I practice speaking up?

  • Also wondering about a speech and language therapist if it's a big problem. They can probably work out what the problem is and teach some tricks appropriate to you. Maybe stuff to do with relaxing, breathing using all your lungs, using chest resonance from humming a low not, physically expanding and being active. I might try a singing coach myself.

    I recall that I was working on a farm and basically was about to have some heavy machinery crush me and someone observed that I can be loud if I need to.

  • I relate strongly. I can sound depressed, and used to mumble so much I was often told off. I do it less often as I've gone on, but any mumbling or confusion or not being able to express myself might be picked up. In the case of mumbling, I'm not really aware of the mumbling - partly because your voice sounds different in your head to when you hear it played back because the sound normally conducts through bone. I'm more likely to be aware of the stumbling, or when someone draws attention to it.

    Some of it is self-confidence, some is practice. Trying to speak clearly to a large room shows you can do it, but if you're caught off-guard when you're in your own mental space, it still happens.  I think believing that other people might not like what I said was one reason I got into the habit - you were forced to answer as a child and knew you might be told off for the answer.

    So learning drama or singing or improv or performance can help the situation arise less often, definitely. When it does arise, just take a breath and ride it through.

  • Would in my case, I've got real problems with pitch. Cannot seem to get it right for the situation. I tend to engage voice in a random way. If I'm stressed it doesn't come out the way I expect, sometimes quite unintelligible.

    With autistic spectrum you don't get the extensive practice in social interaction that would help you judge pitch. Or for that matter speed of delivery. You are likely to be in your own company a lot of the time which gives little practice in speaking up.

    Also you may have difficulty delivering in a manner or fashion appropriate to whom you are talking to, eg. managers, children, police,

    You can also end up apologising too much.

    My solution, not always practised is to assess my environment, and maybe even risk a few ermm or ahem sounds to see how they feel. Most people hesitate and interrupt what they are saying with umms and errs. You will probably find from an autistic spectrum perspective words shoot out readily. So you can afford to take your time, pause, experiment with an introductory phrase, like "perhaps if I put it like this" or in my opinion", pause to see the effect, then carry on.

  • We often misunderstand requests like that as criticism and get defensive because we find it hard to work out if someone is really angry. Take a breath and apologise (we find apologising difficult but it helps to keep a dialogue moving) and raise your voice. Would anything bad happen if you did that?