The Little Mouse Syndrome

Meet three of my students with a severe case of The Little Mouse Syndrome. Amber could let out a few beautiful, emotional notes, but then she'd cover her face with her hands, peek at me through her fingers and say: “that was so bad.” Liliana would open her mouth to sing and only a faint whimper would come out. And when Sander finally experienced a free sound, it overwhelmed him so much that he didn't come back for two years!

I know that feeling all too well, because for the first twenty-five years of my life, I was the same. My singing voice was something I kept bottled up inside me, like: “who would want to listen to that?”

The Little Mouse Syndrome is what I call the mode of staying silent, of living your life on mute because somewhere along the way, you became convinced that your voice wasn't worth hearing.

I've noticed that most often a Little Mouse is created at a specific moment. It's the memory of being told to just mouth the words in the school choir, or your mom turning around in the car and saying “please, stop!” It stings down to the soul, and most people don't need to hear it twice before it becomes a permanent identity.

74% of the singers I asked on my YouTube channel remember clearly that negative comment about their voice. It was the moment they stopped feeling free to express themselves. And in that moment, they became a Little Mouse.

The Cruelty of a Careless "Assessment"

I know the word cruelty sounds harsh. You might think it's just a bit of teasing. Well, let me tell you about my dad.

When he was seven, a couple of kids told the music teacher they wanted to leave the class. The teacher turned on her sweet smile and urged them to stay: “but you’re very talented, don’t give up!” So they stayed.

My dad decided he could use some of that encouragement as well.

He went to her and said he wanted to leave, too. But instead of smiling sweetly like she did for the others, she told him: “well, usually I try to convince my pupils to stay, but in your case… I think it might be a good idea.”

You won’t be surprised to hear that my father didn’t become a musician. For decades, everyone around him said the same thing: “this guy is unmusical. He always sings out of tune. He’s just not the talented one in the family.”

You may think he should have just accepted it, and not attempted to sing at all. Except, it simply wasn’t true! When I became a professional singer, I realized I had never actually listened to my dad sing. And when I finally did, I discovered he wasn't unmusical at all. In fact he had a warm, deep, beautiful voice, and he sang perfectly in tune.

He was just a kid who had been told to shut up, and listened. It held back his joy and creativity… all he allowed himself to do after that teacher’s comment was to half-hum in the kitchen.

Nobody tells a kid who misses a tennis ball that they're not athletic. Nobody takes a crayon out of a five-year-old's hand and says: “I don’t think drawing is for you.” But with singing, for some reason, it’s pretty much accepted to shut kids down.

I had a student — an exceptional blues guitarist — who dreamed of being the lead singer in his band. He was so insecure about his voice however, that he considered hiring someone else as the lead. I promised him I'd help him, and I told him I thought he had a really nice voice (which was true). He admitted: “literally no one has ever said this to me, except for my best friend and you.”

So together, we worked on his voice, because despite everything, he still felt the need to sing. And guess what happened?

Not only is he now the confident lead singer of his band, he has a rich and powerful voice, with a gorgeous vibrato.

But where did his insecurity come from?

After many years of being told he couldn’t sing by his mother, it was hard for him to accept any compliments. But what he didn’t fully understand at first was that the words hadn’t started with her. His mother had been told the exact same thing by her singing teacher as a child — in front of the whole class. The shame of it had stayed with her, and she’d passed it on to her son.

Years later, his mother ran into that teacher and explained how it had affected them both. The teacher was mortified, of course. She had no idea of the damage she’d done.

You can understand now why so many people give up on their dream of singing. That's just a tragedy to me. Singing is one of the most therapeutic experiences there is.

At best, they say, “I don’t care. I’m terrible, but I’ll sing anyway.”

But if they love singing, even while believing they’re bad, imagine what it would feel like if they believed they were good.

I’ve taught singers for over twenty years. They are almost never as bad as they think they are. So why let them sell themselves short?

Too many people settle for a watered-down version of it. Some give it up entirely, and spend forever pretending they don’t miss it.

Why Staying Silent Isn’t Safe

The Little Mouse Syndrome goes way beyond skipping karaoke night. When you stay silent about something you love, you're basically training yourself to hold back. And it seeps into other parts of your life.

You start by not singing, then you're not speaking up in meetings. Before you know it, you're typing “sorry for the late reply” on an email you sent on time. You start giving your inner critic more and more say, until it's not just about singing anymore.

The Way Out of The Trap

Here's the frustrating thing: it takes one second for someone to give you a fear of singing, but getting rid of it? There's no Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo moment where your fears just vanish.

Maybe you’re reading this because you don't know where to start with your voice. Maybe it's because you can't hit the notes you want to hit. But if you're like most of the people I work with, the real reason is simpler and runs much deeper: you don't feel confident enough to sing anywhere. Not even in the shower, to the shampoo bottle.

If that's you, everything in this book was written with you in mind. And I'll show you how to get from that shower to the stage.

The Sticks in Your Wheel

First we need to understand all those hurdles and limitations you face when you try to sing and feel like you’re failing. It just means you’ve been operating with sticks in your wheel. The biggest one is the mental stick we've already talked about: the echo of that teacher or parent telling you to be quiet.

That echo is what makes you hesitate a split second before you hit a note. That split second is what causes most of the problems you’ve been blaming yourself for.

But there are physical sticks, too. Maybe it's a locked jaw, a nonconformist tongue, or a misunderstanding of how your diaphragm moves. These are mechanical problems, and they're fixable. But just like a bicycle with a stick in the spokes, you can't move forward until you pull the stick out.

We aren't going to try to force you to be brave here. Instead, we're going to follow a roadmap. We'll find your specific sticks and pull them out, one by one. And we'll replace them with tricks and habits that make singing feel enjoyable instead of stressful.

There's no one big dramatic breakthrough moment.

There will be lots of them.

But most importantly, at some point, you'll find yourself singing a phrase and it'll just feel easy. It'll feel like the sound is yours. You'll realize that actually, Little Mouse has been gone for a while. And you’ll grin and go: “well, how about that?”