I had some teachers kind of sneak me into some random sessions with a speech therapist in elementary school, because I was in another program they didn’t think applied to me. I wasn’t really sure what I was in speech therapy for, because I didn’t have a lisp or anything. I didn’t notice my own stutter much at that time. I was painfully shy and for a long time associated it with being meek and unsure.
As an adult, it is a bit more obvious to tell what it is. Particularly bc of the tools I have found over time on my own to not get caught on words (my stutter is sometimes a little syllable repeat but mostly the caught in your mouth pause kind). Most people could know me for years and, unless they see me when I’m super sick or have a severe vitamin deficiency, they wouldn’t guess I stutter. I talk fast. If I get caught on a word, it’s so quick I’ll round back in my sentence and have other words in place. People just think I’m quirky and maybe have ADHD. Maybe I have that too, but the stutter is real. It gets really bad sometimes and can be frustrating. If I get frustrated on a sticky word too much, I won’t want to replace it and I’ll try to push through it. Probably not helpful. I don’t find my stutter to be embarrassing, but it can make people impatient. “Get to the point”. “Spit it out”. Or a few people have stuttered at me, and used an—also offensive—“dumb voice” to mock me. That was at an adult and done to be hurtful. It was.
I’ve long accepted my stutter, but I almost never talk about it. Actually, until about a year and a half ago where it got really prominent again due to stress and things. People are often surprised. But I feel like it takes a lot of pressure off a conversation to perform that ‘fluency’, and less pressure also (for me) makes me stutter less, or feel less need to round back over and over sentences to get the right words when the best word becomes a stopping point for me.
Thank you for this podcast. It’s novel, interesting, informative, and inspiring.
