Content
My (32m) tips for stuttering I have been stuttering my whole life on and off and I'm almost stutter free except for when I'm angry or if I'm really stressed out and in a bad place mentally. Here's my tips: 1. It's 90% psychological, the more you think of it the more you will do it. In fact, me writing this post will probably make me stutter for a little while. The way im thinking is that it's almost like an OCD obsessive thought that gets to this never ending feedback loop. Stop the loop and try to disassociate yourself from being a stutterer to a thing that you do. Deny it(however unhealthy it may sound). Not forcefully, try make yourself blind to it and don't give yourself a hard time for not being able to (because you won't for a long time). This way you will not react as much when the block comes. But it will be a slow process. This is the most mindfucking part, the more you try, the worse it gets. That's what drives us mad. 2. Be angry. Start doing sports or games that lets you freak out a little. Let yourself let loose of repressed anger and you will experience less blocks. This will clear out your automatic speech inhibitions creating the blocks in the first place. Regarding inhibitions: ever had fluency while drunk, on shrooms, in the sauna, after doing sports, just awakened or for no reason at all? That's when you are uninhibited. That's what proves that it's possible to be fluent and what drives all of us stutterers completely mad since we can't get any consistency. 3. Stopping the cause of the blocks: i think in some way there's a physical cause to stuttering in the first place, be it neurotransmitter deficiency's or some other neurological defect. Then what happens is that we build this compensation around it, worsening it and creating feedback loops (triggering more stuttering) and emotional trauma around it, fucking up our self image and so on. What works for stopping the initial physical block for me has been two things 1.Overall health. Good sleep, moderate exercising and less sugar consumption. Emotional support, friends, physical activity, the good old boring stuff that all of you already know. 2. Keeping B-vitamins up, especially thiamine. I have tried all kinds but the ones that worked for me were sulbuthiamine and TTFD (tetrahydrofurfyltiamine?) aka allithiamine. Take it with magnesium (very important). I personally go with magnesium citrate or glycinate. Do not skip this step. They work in conjunction and the forms of thiamine i mentioned are far soluble and reach the brain very effectively compared to water soluble thiamine. My stack: TTFD 50mg and 400mg of magnesium citrate every day until blockages stops. Initially it can take weeks and may cause a paradoxical effect initially (look up thiamine refeeding syndrome) As to why this works i dont know. There has been studies doing this on child stutterers with water soluble thiamine with mixed results. Water soluble (thiamine HCl or monohydrate) doesn't work on me though. I personally think it has a connection with thiamine also fixing Wernicke's that causes speech problems thats common with alcoholics (alcohol depletes thiamine) and thiamine fixing the initial blockages in stutterers as well. Sugar also depletes thiamine (it's used by the body to form ATP, super super important) so it might be some issue with our metabolism from the start. TTFD also seems to increase dopamine in the brain and increase endurance shown in rat studies. I recommend checking EONutrition or just Google a bit about thiamine If you're interested. (Note EONutrition sells TTFD so he's biased but so far i haven't found anything too red flaggy from him). Check out derrick lonsdales research if you want even more in depth info. There you have it. Some of this stuff may be common knowledge here but i don't know since I don't want to lurk in this forum to be reminded and get my mind "triggered" to stutter again. I just saw the subreddit in the feed and wanted to share what worked for me because i know how maddening it can be. It WILL take time (months and months and years) and absolutely don't beat yourself up about it. Its the most important thing. Hope it might be helpful for some of you! Also don't challenge yourself. If you feel a block that will be bad, dont force it. It's ok to be silent. The less you actually stutter the less proof you have to yourself that you do, and eventually it will subside. To some this might sound unhealthy but it's the only thing that works. The more stutter you give to the stutter demon (lol) the more you feed it. English is my second language so sorry for some probably fucked grammar 🙂