commentr/StutterDecember 14, 2018

Content

Hard to say when it started, but I remembered stuttering by early grade school. I say moderate because I didn't stutter every word or syllable, but speaking at length to anybody was torture and any form of presentation or classroom reading was downright mortifying. I don't recall what my specific blocks were, but the standard D's and B's and T's and hard consonants at the beginning of words were the real killers I think. I had friends and didn't shy away from socializing, but most people would tell you that I've been extroverted and social with a sense of humour my entire life, which is perhaps what had the effect of pushing me through my stutter and maybe eventually let me simp,y work it out altogether by the time I hit young adulthood. But I am neither a speech pathologist nor physiologist. I still get the very very very seldom block, but infrequently enough that nobody would suspect or call it a stutter. I've been in sales and business management for most of my adult life and routinely present to people and rooms of people in a professional setting. I would theorize that confidence has a lot to do with it, and while I wasn't always confident (how can a kid who stutters and gets teased mercilessly be confident?), at some point I feel like I just learned to suck it up and power through the awkward and painful seconds of a block, and if I didn't draw extra attention to it, my audience general,y wouldn't either. That, combined with employing the usual tricks and workarounds of breathing, pausing, sneaky consonant replacement and word substitution eventually must have just worked it out of my system altogether. The long and short of it is that any minor block I may run into nowadays is not an indefinitely debilitating block - ill stutter the consonant 3 or 4 times and simply move on. If you have any specific questions I'd be happy to answer them!

Themes

Anticipation & AvoidanceIdentity & Disability

Subthemes

Avoidance & SubstitutionAcceptance & PrideOverthinking & Monitoring

Codes (3)

private_speechsocializing_group_sizesocializing_one_on_one