Why do we hate hearing our own voice?

No, you are not alone. When we listen to recordings of ourselves, it’s very common to hate the sound of our own voice. And the explanations range from psychology to physiology.

Normally, when we hear our voice in audios, we regret having clicked on the play. How many times have you thought: “I thought my voice was much prettier than… this”? But why does this happen, anyway?

A first explanation has to do with the bones of our head. Because of them, we have a feeling that our voice is deeper than it actually is.

That’s because these bones make it sound deeper, explains . When we hear the voice of others, that sound reaches us through air conduction, while when we hear our own, much of the sound is internally driven and directly through the bones of the skull, which makes it more serious for us.

Another, more psychological, explanation could be that, upon hearing our voice, we analyze it as we do the voices of others, and thus realize that we are revealing a lot of our personality in our voice, which scares us.

The surgeon specializes in treating voice problems Neel Bhatt account in what a 2005 found that patients, in general, tend to evaluate more negatively the quality of your recorded voice than the objective assessments made by doctors.

“We are simply more used to hearing ourselves sound a certain way”, summarizes the doctor.