postr/StutterApril 18, 2024

I’m in college and I don’t know what to do about my stutter and it feels like its affecting my social life, any help would be appreciated

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Content

I’m in college and I don’t know what to do about my stutter and it feels like its affecting my social life, any help would be appreciated Since I was young i’ve been stuttering and when I was younger, until I was about 10 I went to speech therapy for it, but it never really worked. I used to stutter in the way most people thing of as normal where i’d repeat the first sound of a word until I could get the word out, but at some point it changed to where sometimes it feels like my throat just clenches up and I can’t get words out at all. It usually happens only at the start of sentences and usually once I can get the first sound out the sentence goes smoothly but on occasion midsentence words get blocked too, especially names. The sounds these happen on aren’t consistent and I have no idea why this happens but it makes talking to people really hard. I don’t even know if it counts as a stutter anymore but this was the only community I could find regarding these neurological speech impediments so I felt I should go here and it came from my stutter so i’ll call it a stutter. In early highschool, I became a coxswain (the guy on rowing teams who sits in the boat and yells at rowers) and it helped a lot with my stutter and I started to be able to speak a lot better, I think it’s cause when doing that you need to ‘put on’ a different voice and when I speak in a different voice I find that the throat clenching thing doesn’t really happen. I had to quit later in highschool due to stress and mental health reasons but throughout highschool my speech was pretty good, with the throat clenches not happening too often and it not affecting me too much, so it kind of just became a thing I pushed to the side of my mind and haven’t worried about for a few years. Recently though, since I began college (I went to college far away from home so I had to make entirely new friends), it feels like its coming back badly. I started thinking about it a lot more after I went to an event which my voice is shot from, and the next day lost voice combined with my stutter made it so hard to talk to anyone, and anytime I tried to talk I just couldn’t get things out or had to massively strain and it felt like anytime I talked it just came out weird and offputting. I’m not at a top ranked school or anything but it’s fairly prestigious and competitive and tt feels like people see me differently because how can you communicate who you are as a person if everything you try to say comes out like you’re not as smart or socially adjusted. It’s now no longer just kind of something I can shove aside and so I tried looking up exactly what I have to maybe try and help it a bit, and the closest thing I found was spasmodic dysphonia, but after hearing what that sounds like its not the same thing. I was wondering if anyone in this community had the same thing and if there’s anything I can do to help it, any help would be appreciated. Sorry if this was long but I feel like some of the context could maybe help.

Themes

Anticipation & AvoidanceSpeech & StutteringEmotional ExperienceCauses & VariabilityIdentity & Disability

Subthemes

Feared Words & NamesPhysical TensionAnxiety & Social JudgmentPropositionality & WeightIdentity & Self-Perception

Codes (2)

repeating_oneselfsocializing_group_size