Kept my promise and I really hope people here find it useful - Stuttering Veteran

Kept my promise and I really hope people here find it useful - Stuttering Veteran First, I would like to apologise for the delay in writing this post, I had my exams last week and just couldn't find time to get to this. I'm not very good at writing stuff so please excuse me for the lack of structure and brevity. I have stuttered for almost 20 years of my life and continue to do so with remarkable consistency. Like many would agree, stuttering makes you a complete introvert especially in your formative years and is the single most important reason I sh\*t my pants to this day when I have to speak to someone new. Over the years I tried many things to keep my stutter at bay, a few worked and many others didn't, so I'm going to go over some of them and please keep in mind that different things work for different people. Until I entered 6th grade I didn't really understand what was wrong with me, all I knew was that I was the laughing stock for my classmates and teachers alike, and when I spoke people would either interrupt and brush me off or just mock me to absolute embarrassment. My family isn't very aware of such things so they would always say "it will get better with age" and if anything it was the opposite. (That's enough about my sad life, let's get to the point now) My first attempt at "fixing" myself was to use my alone time (bathroom, bed, etc.) to practice the sentences I messed up throughout the day in hopes that if I repeat it enough I will get used to it. I made a mental note of every single time I stuttered and repeated it as many times as it would take to get it right. I would call it partially effective because I realised after a while that stuttering is as much a mental thing as it is a physical thing. It's like the wiring in your mind should run in tandem with your mouth muscles to get it right. So a modified method was to identify the words or parts of the sentences where I was more prone to a stutter and also the situations in which it happened. I started recording my stutters and made notes of how and when I stuttered the most, and this was the most fruitful exercise although it took me many years and countless failed efforts to properly identify under what circumstances I was more likely to stutter. That is when I observed, at least in my case, that stutters are triggered by 3 things: 1. The uncoordinated movements of lips and cheek muscles when we have to pronounce the vowel sounds. I'm in good flow when I use words with very few vowel sounds, and the moment I do otherwise my facial muscles just cannot keep up with my mind's inputs and I end up rolling over or sliding into the words making my speech incoherent or sometimes just blocking the next sound from coming out. 2. Breathing while talking, which comes naturally to many people is somehow elusive to stutterers and is somehow connected to the uncoordinated muscle movement I mentioned above. If you notice carefully you will observe that every time you face a block or you stutter another thing you also struggle with is smooth and regular breathing. This causes your head to fall back and you end up struggling to catch a breathe which just prolongs your stutter and makes it worse. One flaw feeding another which in turn feeds the former - a vicious and painful cycle. 3. This is the most important of all, the pathological fear that you will stutter at the very next word that comes out of your mouth. I just cannot emphasise in words, how less people talk about it and how easily people think it can be overcome with self-confidence and will power. It's like an itch in your brain that you can't scratch, you just cannot make it go away. You will have to live with it and find ways to manage it, but it will always be there throughout your life. Once I identified these things, I tried various methods for years to overcome this and like a lab rat being experimented on, had to go through a lot of soul-crushing moments in life to see if the methods were effective. After a few s\*\*c\*dal thoughts, countless regrets and a heartily acceptance of my flaws I was able to finally come up with ways that, to this day, help me manage my stutters better with relatively fewer embarrassments. 1. Practice, practice and practice. Developing a strong muscle memory, especially for words you use regularly, is a key step in managing stuttering. Like in the movie "About Time" I live every instance in my day twice, the first would be physically like everyone with my stutter acting up whenever it wishes to, and the second in my mind where I practice the sentences I stuttered at. The moment I mess up, I take note of it and whenever I find myself alone or doing nothing I just practice sentences in my head that I feel I could have said better. When I watch TV I deliberately try to keep up with the actors and repeat what they say, and sometimes when I talk to people I keenly observe how they are pronouncing (physical movements) words and then try it out later to see if it works for me (like a toddler learning to speak, lol). This behaviour has got so deep into me that sometimes I forget people are around me, and just begin practicing sentences I messed up earlier in the day in a low voice making them think that something possessed me xD. It's really embarrassing so I always have to consciously check if someone is around before I do my routine. 2. Keep it slow and break your speech. It's alright if you are not able to make your point as quickly as people want you to. As much as we want to respect others' time, we also need to accept that we have limitations and it is okay to expect people to be a little more understanding and patient with us. Take a lot of tiny breaks between parts of your sentences. You need to keep your breathing as consistent as possible as this gives enough time for your mouth muscles to catch up and also makes it easy for you to pronounce difficult words as opposed to doing it in one shot. If you sense awkwardness when breaking then try to use fillers like "umm", etc. as it will make it look like you're saying it in a flow. (I do that a lot and some people couldn't even figure out that I stutter) 3. Hand gestures and subtle facial expressions. You might think I'm crazy to even suggest such a thing but, trust me when I say this, this has been the most effective method for me so far. All the others have certainly helped me get a grip on my stutter but I've seen a significant difference in the way I speak (both speed and fluency) when I'm a bit more involved and animated compared to having a still body language and just running my mouth mechanically. I have absolutely no idea how this is even connected to speech, but I noticed that on some level it helps calm my nerves, alleviates the pathological fear I spoke about earlier and more importantly makes it feel like I have that wee bit of extra time to work with while keeping the flow of my speech intact. There's also a downside to this, I did observe that whenever I get too excited or passionate about what I'm saying I end up entering the stutter territory so looks like we have very small margin here and we need to try not to overdo it 4. This is less of a solution and more of a preemptive measure - if you're meeting someone important or someone new and you think you might stutter then go over the things you want to ask or tell them beforehand and try to get comfortable with your speech and make note of things you definitely want to avoid saying if they've caused you trouble in the past. I do this in my workplace and it gives me a sense of calm because I feel like I already had a conversation with that person in my alternate reality and that settles the nerves a bit. These things have been working for me for the last 4-5 years now, and although they are effective I still have my daily stutter, most of the times its not very embarrassing but it does gets out of hand when I talk to strangers, have to speak to a large group or use words that are not part of my regular vocabulary. It's a continuous process and I made peace with the fact that I might have to do this for the rest of my life. Getting comfortable with different words and sentences is the cornerstone of speech therapy and instead doing it in a counsellor's office I just made it a part of my daily routine where I create imaginary conversations and keep myself prepared just in case it comes up in real life. Some of the things that I do might sound mental or just outright ridiculous, but after a lot of introspection I've just accepted the extreme measures I need to take to avoid the rough childhood and teen years I had reappear in my adult life as well. I really hope people find some of this useful, and in case you guys found something that is working for you please feel free to share here so that someone might benefit from it.