The Tired Blame Game: Systemic Ignorance in the Voice Teaching Profession

2023

Many voice experts and singers still insist on blaming vocal fold injuries on a singer’s “lack of vocal technique.”

If you truly believe this, it’s time you learn that this is not true.

And if you question a teacher’s ability to teach singing after they’ve revealed their own diagnosed vocal fold injury, you are uninformed.

Vocal health, rehabilitation and the stories of performers have been educating singing teachers and singers for over 35 years.

Have you disassociated professionally from a singer because you didn’t want anyone to think their diagnosed injury was the result of your teaching? Do you get frustrated working with singers who’ve been diagnosed with injury and are not responding to your council, so you resort to a power-play and suggest other things that are wrong with them?

If you are one of these experts, maybe you have some learning and unlearning to do.

Once my son-in-law ran a marathon without any training at age 16. He admits now it was reckless. In this case, injury would be expected. But do we blame athletes when they are injured on the playing field, or while training, or they have an accident or their schedules are very demanding over a long period of time? No, of course not.

It should be the same with singers.

While vocal fold injuries can be the result of a singer’s poor singing and lifestyle habits, often the injury occurs through no fault of the singer.

And actually the exact opposite is more often true: Dysfunctional singing can be the RESULT of a vocal fold injury or pathology, not the CAUSE of it!!

A good example is the catch-all diagnosis of Muscle Tension Dysphonia. MTD can be the result of undiagnosed vocal fold injuries or pathologies due to the natural compensatory vocal behaviors that occur when the voice isn’t working.

(Confusingly, MTD can also be the result of poor technique or singing health habits.)

Two examples, just to make a point

It’s not uncommon for vocal fold cysts to wax and wane with a female’s monthly menses. This can interrupt the function of the vocal folds and surrounding muscles. The development of a vocal fold cyst is often not due to “lack of proper technique” but can develop due to the ebb and flow of hormonal tissue changes in the vocal folds as the reproductive hormones are fluctuating. (Please note: not all female singers experience this)

Vocal fold paresis, paralysis, benign essential tremor and spasmodic dysphonia are also not due to “lack of proper technique.” And this is important to know—there’s a wide spectrum of mild to moderate to severe in each diagnosed case. Some cases are more severe than others.

Voice teachers have been working successfully with singers who have very slight cases of paresis without anything being diagnosed for a long time. But it’s when the paresis is further along the spectrum, or the singer has had it for a long time and built up strong compensatory behaviors, or ENT’s miss the paresis and the singer goes from doctor to doctor trying to get help, that more deeply entrenched emotional and physical issues emerge.

And this requires the help of a teacher/voice expert with certain skill sets and experiences.

Explosion of information & methods

The absolute necessity of a multi-disciplinary team approach to treat vocal fold pathologies is still not understood because it takes time for interested teachers and specialists to develop trusted working relationships. Each member of the team needs to take medical and scientific information (and in my case, even esoteric learning and energy work!) and then turn it into practical tools, often combining their own adjacent interests and specialties with the vocal recovery process.

The Five “WII’s” HAHA, GET IT? And I don’t mean World War II

• WE need to remain curious. Yes, this means YOU, award-winning singing teachers with multiple award-winning students, coaches of established, working singers, voice faculties in a colleges or institutions, otolaryngologists who treat singing stars and singers who (blessedly) don’t experience injuries.

• WE must recognize that excellent, career voice experts can’t possibly have all the present-day tools to aide the process of vocal recovery of every person who comes to them. You may haven’t yet developed the personal capacity for effective team-work that these conditions need, because you are used to be the only ones in town doing the innovative work, often bearing the brunt of professional skepticism. (I understand this better than most.)

  True team-work, as a lens through which you see life, almost always involves a certain ego-busting. If team-work ISN’T busting your ego occasionally, it isn’t team-work!

• WE have to communicate with each other with practiced diplomatic communication skills: If you are someone who speaks directly and confidently, develop patience and humility to listen to others. Perhaps others’ methods take too much time for you and, after all, YOU have a better way. Or if you are someone who often searches for words, learn to be direct and communicate more clearly why you value something. Are you too heady, vague or lost in your own brilliance? Keep trying. Learning how to communicate takes time.

• WE are required to not lose our own capacity for continual learning and get stuck in a litany of what we’ve always always done. Our egos—which are just constructs for survival—may not feel like they can survive the continual reconstruct to see outside our boxes over time. Believe me, I understand!

• WE need to recognize when we’ve resorted to blaming a singer with diagnosed injury for their inability to follow our directions or do what we want. Frustration can be a high motivator if we seek out the advice of others or it helps us look beyond our scope of practice. But often, the frustration results in experts bullying, mild shaming, or using destructive judgement under the guise of “helping.”

  Changing your inner attitudes and what you believe, or what you think you know, is hard. It takes time and courage and maybe even cognitive therapy. But the results eventually liberate you and the injured singers you work with.

  And that’s when the real music happens!