Some More Insights

My issue with my voice is imaginary - a creation of my tense body. What I do is, I feel tense, and begin to think tense. While I'm speaking, instead of just letting the process work on its own, I interfere, I maintain that sense of tension throughout the process of speaking.

Thoughts that make me anxious: "I'm not going to be able to get out of this situation. Sometimes, the tension sticks to me like glue. Will I ever get better? Will I ever achieve a level of comfort where  others can enjoy and seek my company?"

Thoughts which make me feel better: "practice makes [almost] perfect. I need to continue thinking positively about myself. This is the only possible way that I can promote relief, relaxation and restoration."

Sometimes, these two ideas battle inside my mind. My pessimistic side believes I am always going to project "some" level of tension beneath my voice. It'll be enough to turn people off from me. My positive, undoubtedly knowing better, knows that I have spoken plenty of times where I objectively didn't experience or afterwards notice any type of dis-ease. I notice I feel this way best when I am simply totally involved in the subject I'm speaking about. I'm not conscious of any issue of ease, or tension, or insecurity; There also isn't much of a sense of "trying". Trying itself is a paradoxical word. When I speak, obviously, I made an effort to speak. I "tried". But trying can also mean trying too hard, and this, I know, I do far too often. Trying to hard seems to be trying in a state of cognitive tension. Particularly a state that watches and observes itself as it tries to experience itself do well.

I bought a few books related to Yoga and trauma. I think feeling myself, feeling good, is the first and most necessary step towards healing. Any sympathetic nervous response, such as "hey, what are yuo doing!", which just bursts out of my mouth when I see someone going through my wallet, is first preceded by a state of cognitive ease. The ease sets up and allows a smooth transition to sympathetic arousal.

Yoga will just be one of many different tools that will help me feel more relaxed, less involved in tense apprehensive thought patterns "how will I say this", that usually occurs before I speak, thereby invoking the tension into my act of speech.