The voice that scares me
I’m sure that many of you in your lifetime have dealt with some form of trauma, as it comes in all shapes, both large and small. However, throughout the years, many seem to forget the trauma and organically grow past it or learn from it and fear it.
For me, I dealt with self-image trauma as a child. I was constantly being picked on for my weight and even more for my voice. Growing up, I always had a voice that was higher than everyone else’s, and most people never let me forget it.
So as time went on, I was scared of my voice. I was ever more scared to watch myself speak because then it was real, then it was me with the voice that was so intolerable compared to the norm.
Branching into adulthood, this trauma took form in many ways. I developed anxiety for answering phone calls, I was terrified of zoom meetings, and whenever I doubted myself, the trauma amplified tenfold.
The Journey Begins
Then in 2020, I embarked on a weight loss journey, by this time I went from a Chubby adolescent to a 500-pound adult who was anchored at the computer and terrified to communicate. I somehow managed to become successful despite my flaws, but I knew that if there was one thing to overcome, it was my weight and the perspective I held over my voice and self.
Before kicking off my journey, I decided that my goal wasn’t weight loss. It was to develop a mindset for accountability and discipline and turn consumption into a functional habit rather than one of indulgence.
So I opted to take advantage of a vertical gastric sleeve tool, which would assist me in the first nine months of my journey. However, I made a plan on how I planned on executing with the constraints invited by this tool, and those constraints completely shifted the value of the experiment.
The First Challenge
When kicking off a weight loss surgery, an essential first step consists of a liquid diet. You are essentially told to drink fruity shakes full of protein to shrink your liver for one week. While this does shrink your liver, the concept being forced on you is whether or not you are mentally capable of being successful with the surgery.
I, however, didn’t enjoy sugary, fruity shakes that were made to make it feel like I wasn’t losing the value of food. I wanted to push myself. I used something called Bone Broth. I also focused on coffee with butter and heavy water consumption. Most people who do the pre-opt do a single week, and I did two and half weeks.
During these two and half weeks, I lost 50 pounds and felt absolutely amazing. I traveled to have my surgery done, and when surgery was over, everyone else sat in bed groaning. I got up and started walking. I didn’t stop walking until I met my goals, I came home from that surgery, and I continued that liquid diet for an additional ninety days.
Once I knew mentally I could live without food and feel great, I started to introduce high protein and fat dieting concepts, continued non-exertive exercise, and focused on my goal of teaching myself a new lifestyle of function, accountability, and discipline.
Now, almost two years later, I have lost over three hundred pounds. I shredded the person I used to be. Then, I began a journey of self-development to overcome those traumas. The strange thing about losing weight and developing a new lifestyle is that when you look in the mirror, you don’t recognize yourself any longer, and it takes quite a while to become reacquainted.
The Second Challenge
I had decided that I would live life with purpose. That purpose would never be solely focused on me, it would always be to seek out and help others, and through that, I started developing the inner monolog that I had always desired but proved absent in the past.
Throughout this process, I eventually hit the roadblock of my voice once again. I started to get on the phone and zoom more but still felt self-conscious. Then one day, I decided to start recording videos. If you’ve never self-recorded videos, you’d know that it’s a bizarre process of looking at yourself in the camera and talking within an empty room. There is nothing natural about the feeling when you first start.
Notable Outcome
Over time, I had done this time after time, getting better and better, sharing it with others and receiving feedback, iterating throughout the entire process until one day I started recording, then watching my videos and enjoying them.
The trauma had subsided, and it wasn’t because my voice changed, it’s because I had realized that the monolog I developed, the appearance I worked for, and the voice I was born with were absolutely in sync with the message being spoken.
For the first time in my life, I realized who I was and felt proud, but I will never forget what my voice used to sound like, it haunts me, just like the image above haunts me, but it led me here.
