postr/StutterApril 8, 2020

Selective-Mutism when Stuttering

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Selective-Mutism when Stuttering Hi, I'm new to this subreddit. When I was a kid, I had a thick southern accent combined with really bad stuttering which led to me being in speech therapy. The speech therapist couldn't understand what I was saying because of my combined stutter and accent, so most of my therapy was done listening to people talk. Since then, most of my accent is gone and is instead replaced with a mish-mash of different accents, because I listened to recordings of people saying words. My stutter isn't as bad, because one of the things they taught me was to just stop and think about what I wanted to say. Well, fast forward about 20 years in the future and now no one can even tell I stutter. However, they believe that I'm extremely quiet. What is really going on is that when I can notice myself start to stutter, I stop talking completely. Every conversation I have with someone I try to work through a script in my head to make sure I won't stutter. Sometimes, I won't have a script ready and someone will say something and I won't have a response ready until like 5 minutes later, which leads me to staying silent out of social anxiety. Almost all of my social anxiety stems from my stutter and selective-mutism whenever the stuttering starts. A lot of times I'll even mute myself preemptively if I believe I will stutter, just to give myself a better chance. I know that this behavior might not be the best and I figured I'd share my story with you all to see if anyone else has this problem and if they've found a way to combat it. Thanks.

Themes

Anticipation & AvoidanceEmotional Experience

Subthemes

Avoidance & SubstitutionHiding & ConcealmentAnxiety & Social JudgmentHelplessness & Agency