Yourself on tape

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I just do one of my Austins if I don't want my picture tooking. Yeah, Baby!

I never can listen or watch myself recorded, I have to leave the room or turn away and hide... all my quirks become so much more appearant to me then.

I remember this one time, at my grandfather's funeral, when they were playing a slideshow video with the worst picture ever taken of me in it! how embarrasing, all I could think about through the whole slideshow was anticipating people's reaction to that picture.

And my mother has this really goofy looking picture of me from grade 6.. I was wearing some ugly rock shirt, had long thick blond hair and big buck teech which she refuses to get rid of.. she keeps it on the fireplace and everyone that comes here sees it.. I hide it everytime a friend comes over.

I can't stand hearing recordings of my voice, it seriously makes me cringe! Probably because I hate my voice- it sounds bad enough in my head....
Im looking more like my mental picture of myself than ever before but still hate photos of me (I dont feel very photogenic) and video recordings- luckily not many of these have been made in the last few years.
The only exception being one or two videos made when I was little. I have a noticable accent which i prefer to the one I have now and I cant really connect myself with that little girl.

Yes. There is no faster way to drive me from a room than to: play a tape with my voice on it, or a video, or to show up with a videocamera (I hide for a very long time until I'm certain it's gone).

My voice always sounds so...stupid....and I have a way of being silent for a long time and then suddenly blurting out something. It is so abrupt and harsh....and seeing myself on video is even worse, I am very awkward and move the same way I speak, abruptly and without warning, and purposefully. The worst was a video of myself as best maid at my sister's wedding. She had me dressed in this awful gown, with makeup (yech!! !) and my hair curled..I didn't even look like myself. I went charging down the aisle with my bouquet as though I were on the warpath or something....in retrospect I think I was dreading the whole thing and wanted to get it over with ASAP.

No idea on tape, but on film I look sucky like a jerky robot or the like.

I have to listen to myself on tape all the time so I'm used to that - but video tape and pictures - yuck! I can think of only one picture of myself that I acutally like - but I also hate mirrors - there is something about seeing my own image that makes me very nervous . . .

In doing this RDI program with my son I have to endure watching and listening to myself on video.

I look like some skinny insect-man with jittery hands and a stupid voice flailing around on the screen.

I found more examples of my voice on tape. I was doing a "treasure hunt" on one of my old computers today, and I found I series of MP3 files on my computer dated 10/22/2002. I opened one up and was shocked to realize what was on them.

To brief everyone, I have a little pocket MP3 player that can also record MP3's using the built in microphone for things like lectures.

Finding these files reminds me of project I had undertaken when I was working at the grocrey store I hope never to go back to. Anyway, we had one employee who would tell all kinds of stories about the adventures he would have during break time. Almost all of these were blatently false, and made up (of course I didn't realize this until I heard others talking about it). The MP3 player I have I had bought from another employee for $20. And he suggested, along with the encouragment of the other people in my department, that I bring it in to work, and try to get his stories recorded for the enjoyment of the other employees.

I didn't get a story on break that night, what I got was a 15 minute conversation of myself and five other people on break.

I was shocked listening to myself talk. My voice was flat, slightly slurred, and very perversative. Listening to myself, I could tell that I was struggling to keep up my end of the conversation. I had always known that my voice has an odd pitch to it, but I never realized how bad I sound to others.

i sound like a douche bag on tape, lol.

I might upload some voice overs I took, if you like.

ick, i hate it.

i don't even like to leave voice reminders on my pda.

I sound wierd on tape.

I hate my voice on tape , I sound too Welsh

Oh yes, I've always felt a more or less slight aversion to listening to myself on tape!

I used to hate recordings of my voice, ever since the first time I heard it when I was 9 years old, even though I've never disliked what I hear when I'm actually talking. It was much the same with singing, but I was so mad keen on becoming a good singer that I kept practising and improving my singing till it was good enough for me to like. But my spoken voice still annoyed me on recordings. I've worked on improving it a bit, with some success. It's a similar skill to singing well - a lot of it was about getting good intonation instead of mumbling, and trying to get it to somehow sound attractive, whatever that means. I recorded myself reading a few passages out of story books for my son when he was a child, and that helped me to hone the skill. I still think I need more practice but it's better than it was.

One thing I did when I was a teenager was to record a mock radio show where I pretended to be a DJ and talked between playing records. I was surprised how authentic and appealing I managed to make that sound in a few places. I guess I'd used my mimicry skills, having heard a lot of DJs on the radio. I think it might be useful for anybody with low confidence in their voice to keep recording it and listening back, and to keep practising till the results are good. Recordings are quite good for learning that kind of thing.

I've never yet been able to get my voice to sound good on a Skype sound test though. It must be something to do with the bad sound quality when they relay it back. I always hope that I don't sound like that to other people when I Skype with them, but I don't suppose so. I suspect the sound degradation is twice as bad on the test as it is on a call, and I think part of my dislike of the results is psychological, because to me I sound like I've got the worst speaking voice in the world, and that seems statistically very unlikely. I used to feel the same way about my physical appearance but I started feeling a lot better about that when I was in my 20s and saw some photos of myself that I felt were quite attractive.

Nooooo. No. No. Can't do it. Just reading the title of this thread gave me anxiety.