Trauma-Informed Singing and Teaching

This past spring I had the opportunity to take a course with Dr. Elisa Monti, a trauma in voice specialist, through the Voice Study Centre at the University of Essex. Defining trauma is difficult as it encompasses physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual aspects of a person. Severe trauma causes an autonomic nervous stress response that requires intervention to be halted and healed, as the body absorbs trauma and keeps score (Van der Kolk, 2014). Traumatic experience can include abuse, violence and war, neglect, accident and injury, death of a loved one, divorce, and natural disasters. For every soldier serving on a war front, there are ten children who are endangered in their own homes (Van der Kolk, 2014). This staggering ratio of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) have been found to impact people’s health into adulthood (Felitti et al., 1998) and voice quality in particular (Monti and Sidtis, 2018). People sense stress in different parts of their body, but vocal responders generally have childhood trauma, with evidence linking reduced vocal intensity in singers with childhood emotional neglect and insecure attachment (Monti et al., 2017; Becker et al, 2024).

Exploring the effects of trauma on the voice requires an interdisciplinary approach, combining insights from the fields of trauma psychology, psychiatry, psychopathy, psychophysiology, speech pathology, communication, vocology, and acoustics. This is demonstrated in a study testing whether listeners high in psychopathic traits were more accurate at detecting survivors from hearing voice recordings (Monti et al., 2024). Findings suggest that when potential perpetrators hunt for a victim, they can make decisions from voice alone, highlighting the necessity to investigate the impact of voice in interpersonal violence and trauma. Survivors, particularly those with PTSD, often exhibit flatter, slower, and more monotonous speech patterns, reduced vocal intensity, increased irregularities in the acoustical signal, and heightened vocal tension in the neck and throat (Monti et al., 2024).

If voice has a role in violence prevention it would be important to find possible ways to mask those same cues through specialized voice training (Denardo Roney et al., 2018). Understanding these vocal markers allows for the development of targeted voice training programs to enhance vocal confidence, improve prosody, and reduce laryngeal tension.

• Enhancing Vocal Confidence: Techniques to increase vocal intensity and dynamic range can help survivors project confidence.

• Improving Prosody: Exercises focusing on pitch variation and speech rhythm can counteract monotonic speech patterns.

• Reducing Laryngeal Tension: Incorporating relaxation and breath control techniques can alleviate throat tension, leading to a more natural voice quality.

Such training not only aids in modulating vocal cues but also contributes to the overall well-being and empowerment of trauma survivors.

One strategy is to encourage students to write about their life goals (King, 2001) and to involve emotional processing in the content (Pennebaker, 1997). Pennebaker poses the extent to which writing down psychological events into words can supplement or even substitute for medical and psychological treatments. Now with digital identities, self-disclosure on social media and chatbots, the potential strategies are endless, but do not always lead to internal safety. 

Encourage clients with severe trauma to work with a professional trained in somatic therapies (EMDR, OEI, IFS, or Sensorimotor Psychotherapy)  to get in touch with memories, emotions, or impulses that they have repressed or disowned.  Regrounding a sense of self and learning emotional regulation skills are very important before confronting patterns that no longer serve the person and originated in the trauma. Not doing this preparatory work before delving into traumatic memories can overwhelm the nervous system.

Shadow work (Jungian psychology) helps individuals explore and reintegrate what has been repressed or exiled in themselves. More than understanding and commanding one’s self-narrative, shadow work requires the integration of emotional and somatic content. Shadow work invites people to face uncomfortable feelings like shame, rage, grief, and guilt—emotions often deeply connected to trauma. 

P.S. The brain is still the central processor of ALL interoceptive messages. And that is a highly variable process whereby the same signal can generate very different experiences within individuals. That’s where associations, feelings, and what we casually call "memory" come from. Even something as simple as an exogenously-generated elevated heart rate can invoke fear and anxiety in one person, and excitement and thrill in another. These feelings--and memories-- are created by the brain and they are not universal. The body may keep the score, but the brain is interpreting the numbers. THAT's the misunderstanding.

A nerve or a heart aren't making the value judgements.

We must be careful as thinkers not to anthropomorphize biological phenomena as human-centric processes. We must be just as diligent as we are to other forms of elitism. These things happen across species and we don’t use the same poetic imagery, despite its appeal. After all, pig hearts are used quite often in transplants. Do we talk about having pig memories? Humans are not this 'exception' that get the special evolutionary heart with food craving memory. Correlation is NOT causation. (Moss Erickson, 2025 facebook post) The heart does not hold memory - the brain does. Muscle memory is about automatcity through myelination, but the heart muscle doesn't process poetic memories. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lanson-burrows-jones-jr-49161651_neurocardiology-heartbrain-peerreviewedscience-activity-7331674765822226433-mHw2/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKvMLVleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBUT0hmcHBFOENqOFNxSkdBAR7-VWXFFnQMf4U6Ph-HizSAotCmkC2Bq-uKLZHXuhcBD5OmLUFE-N42jdXDCg_aem_sE6ZJLchmMYz6aqyh05UZg

Sources:

Becker, D. R., Welch, B., Monti, E., Sullivan, H., & Helou, L. B. (2024). Investigating Past Trauma in Laryngoresponders Versus Non-Laryngoresponders: Piloting New Methods in an Exploratory Study. Journal of Voice, 38(6), 1334– 1343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2022.05.011

Denardo Roney, J. L. et al. (2018). Psychopathy and Victim Selection: Does Nonverbal Decoding or Empathy Impact Vulnerability Ratings? Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(3-4) 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260517742914

Felitti, V. J. et al. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258.

Jones Christensen L., Embry E., Newman A.B., et al. (2025). If the body keeps the score, what happens when you bring the body to work? Exploring the health effects of trauma on human capital. Business & Society, 64(3), 558–592.

King, L. (2001). The health benefits of writing about life goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(7), 198-807. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201277003

Koriath, E. J. (Ed.). (2023). Trauma and the Voice: A Guide for Singers, Teachers, and Other Practitioners. Rowman & Littlefield.

Monti, E., Kidd, D. C., Carroll, L. M., & Castano, E. (2017). What’s in a singer’s voice: The effect of attachment,

emotions and trauma. Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, 42(2), 62–72. https://doi.org/10.3109/14015439.2016.

Monti, E., & Sidtis, D. V. L. (2018). Can childhood trauma impact the adult voice through the brain? Journal of

Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, 3(1), 45. https://doi.org/10.1386/jivs.3.1.45_1

Monti, E. et al. (2024). Can perpetrators discern survivors from voice? European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 15(1), 2358681. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008066.2024.2358681

Pennebaker, J. W. (1997) Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8, 162- 166. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00403.x

Van der Kolk B.A. (2014) The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Viking.