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My experiences during stutter therapy #1 Introduction First of all, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm a 27 year old student, hopfully finishing my masters soon. Studying engineering, I often need very specific words I cannot work around: I need to pronounce them even if I can't because it is a word I know I'm going to stutter (if it's not completely stuck in my throat). My stuttering is mild. It's specific words I just can't seem to get out, I'm literally suffocating on them (throat closes, not even air is coming through any more) and I will stand there making some mufling *mmhhhmmmhmm* sounds where a word should fill the silence. Because of this I developed a habit of circumventing the problem by restructuring my sentence completely to avoid THAT word (for example, I have a hard time with words starting with a hard letter, like "coffee" or "car". Those words will get stuck in my throat and I will say "automobile" instead of "car"). Now, needing very specific words at times this makes me look like I don't know the correct word. It honestly makes me look dumb. My current project is on parallelkinematik robotics. I cannot pronounce "paralellkinematic", so I often just say "robot" which is highly unprofessional and makes me look bad infront of the whole Institute. As many of you will feel the same, it also is very frustrating to not be able to say what you really want to say, or to not say anything in the first place because you know "Oh I need word xy, I can't say that so better just stay quiet". This has cost me so much social interaction it's unbelievably frustrating. People talking about something you alot about? Welp, better stay quiet so nobody hears you stuttering, right? You feel helpless, like your own mind is playing tricks on you. Why can't I fucking say this thing? What the fuck is wrong with me? Being by myself I can say EVERYTHING, every. single. word. But as soon as anyone, even my girlfriend, is in the same room, it's gone. It was her who decided this has to stop. Not because it was annoying her, she absolutely doesn't care about my stuttering. but because it was me who suffered. So she made me do some phone calls, get appointments and finally start a therapy which I now want to talk about. #2 Therapy Today, I finished my 7th session. Each session is 45 minutes and it's a 1on1 talk with my therapist, who is very understanding and among the best ones in my region. ## Sessions 1+2: A get to know and confidence boost So in the first 2 sessions you have to build trust. She was very understanding and at times brought tears to my eyes because it was so relieving to finally talk to someone who completely understands you and knows exactly what you're going through, maybe even better than yourself. She explained to me that stuttering is a problem in the brain and it is not going to change, ever. It's part of me and I will always stutter. There is no cure, only ways to accept it to be part of you and to make peace with it. So we got to know each other and she showed me a technique to be able to pronounce those words, and we practiced this on some hard words. This techniqe is to soften the first letter of the word, so instead of "car" I had to say "char", instead of "coffee" it was "choffee" and so on. I practicied it and it worked fine. This gave me some control over my talking and I felt more confident. The confidence boost was the secret goal of my therapist, not me being able to speak my fear-words. This was merely a technique to quickly give me a tool and a feeling of success,but the underlying problem was something else: **My fear of stuttering** ## Sessions 3-5: Love yourself, embrace who you are She adviced to me not to use this technique anymore, which I found very weird. She then explained to me that this technique can fail if I'm very anxious, for example having to speak in front of a croud or having an important talk with my boss. Then, if it fails, I willhave no tool to defend myself and will have even more fear than before, thus increasing my stuttering and being worse off than before, in situations that are very important to me and my life. So how to we tackle this? I have to lose my fear. I have to accept the stuttering to be part of me and let it control me, but to control itself. A quote from her >Your stuttering is part of you. You cannot chose when to stutter, but you can chose how to stutter. What she now teaches me is: Accept your stuttering. People do not care. If you control your stutter, stay calm, do the new technique I'm going to show you, you will be able to talk about anything you want. So the new technique is: Stutter. Yes, fight fire with fire. But this time, control the fire. Be the master, not the slave. Stay calm and relaxed and stutter. So for example I want to say car, but I know I can't, I will say "c...c...car" in a calm and controlled manner. And S L O W L Y. Do not try to quickly overcome the word by speeding up, this will only stress you and worsen the symptons. Give yourself time, give every stutter a second or two until you feel the word coming out. She wants me to do at least two stutters per word, with each of them taking at least one second. She also wants me to stutter at words I normally don't have problems with, just to get me used to it and to lose the negative feeling link to the stuttering. I have to lose all the fear and negativity to it, it must become second nature and completely neutral. **This is the goal of the whole therapy.** Say what you really want to stay, do not restructure your sentence, do not stay quiet. Say it and if it is a difficult word, then start to stutter it in a controlled manner so that you stay calm. If it helps you you can announce your stuttering, for example in a job interview you can just go into the offense and say "Just for your information, I stutter and sometimes new a few seconds to say what I want to say". They will greatly appreciate and maybe even remark your confidence to speak about your problem directly. It also makes the whole situation easier for them as they understand why you sometimes need a little pause to breathe or to collect yourself. Now, you will probably not do that to be honest (I didn't). You want to embarrass yourself, am I right? You probably met some people and tried your best to hide your stuttering so you don't want to ruin their picture of you, you don't want to flaw it. But it's only a flaw in your own eyes. Again, people don't fucking care. Stutter in their face and they will think "he stutters" and that's fucking it. They will not think you're retarded or braindamaged or whatever. If you confidently and calmly stutter it can even turn to be a positive because people will think "hey he stutters but fuck me if he doesn't give a single shit and gives a killer presentation right here". So, we went outside and she started talking to random people, pretending to stutter "H..hello, do you kn..kn..know where the next sta...station is?", she asked some random people on the street. Nobody reacted badly. Some frowned but ONLY because they didn't know what was up when she made a sudden break during talking. When she then revealed her stutter the people relaxed again, showing a "ah Is ee the break was because she stutters, alright" impression. And all showed her the way to the next station. I was only a watcher in this experiment as I was way to anxious to try this myself. But this showed me, people don't give a single shit. On my 5th session she made some phone calls, asking random hotels if they have room for her parents for the weekend. She announced her stuttering by saying "Hello my name is xy and I stutter, so don't wonder if I need a few seconds sometimes" and she proceeded to ask questions about the price, breakfast and so on. Then she gave me the phone and it was my task to calla hotel and do the same. My heart was pounding and reluctantly I did it, announcing my stuttering and tried my best to NOT circumvent hard words and to simply stutter them in a calm way. And you know what? It felt fucking awesome. For the first time I embraced it and controlled it. I felt relieved. I was in charge, I could TALK and SAY what I wanted to say without being hostage of my stuttering. ## Session 6: Bring your girlfriend to work My therapist wanted me to bring my girlfriend, so I did. I barely talked this time, but they did. Basically my gf got briefed to encourage me to stutter and to not help me ordering food or making phone calls. I have to slowly step out of my comfort zone, and being able to freely and fearlessly stutter to my girlfriend it the first step. After that it's friends, family, work and strangers. ## Session 7: Stepping out of the comfort zone Just as I said, it's all about stopping to hide. Do not hide the stuttering, go into the offense. Stutter. To me, this means I have to start stuttering to people I'd hate stuttering to. For the enxt step, this would be my girlfriends parents. I'm not feeling ready to stutter to my colleagues or my boss, or strangers, but maybe I will make it, to stutter in front oy my and my girlfriends parents. Taking babysteps, one at a time. There is no overnight solution. I have to accept it and lose the deep rooted fear associated with it, which had over 20 years of time to grow and grow and to get me into a tight grip. ## After Session 7 I still have some sessions to go and I'm excited (and also a bit fearful) of what's to come. ---- If I had to condense my experiences I would advice the following: * Stuttering is part of you, there is no cure * People don't give a fuck, the only one doing so is you * Go into the offense and say what you want to say, even if it means to stutter * Stay calm and control your stutter. Give yourself time. Announce your stutter if it helps you. * Break out of your comfort zone. Stutter to people you would never dare stutter to. Make phone calls and ask random stuff, like prices for a hotel room. * If you never make peace with stuttering you will live a life of frustration and missed opportunities. It has to become normal to you, without you given shits or a second thought. Unlock the door that keeps you out of conversations and just walk through.