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My short story and theory Hello, my name is Joe, i am 28 years old and i am professional and advanced severe sutterer. Even though i am physicaly healthy and still young individual i am unable to live my life at all. My life stopped completely 15 years ago and now i am "living" with my parents totally dpendent from them. I have some ideas on causes for suttering that i want to share with you but first i'll try to explain my background. I was raised in relatively normal familly but there was always someting wierd in relations with me and my father - i didn't feel like he was treating me like a individual being, but merely he's extensions that is supposed to meet his expectations. I was always critisized for literally everythig... using too much water in the bathroom, having to many lights switched on in my room, opening the fridge for to long, swallowing food to loud... things that he was doing exactly same way or even worse. When i tried to reason with him, he would get angry and tell me that i dont respect him and i lack humility. When i asked him to explain me something he would often say: you're to young, its complicated subject, you wont understand it anyway. When i shared someting that i acomplished and was proud of he would say: you just got lucky, or: someone told you/helped you, or: you succeded because i told you how to do it. He forbid me to show anger, when i showed some kind of emotions he would ridicule me and have fun at my cost. When i was letting him know that i am displeased with how he is treating me he would often ask: why you're so sensitive and grumble ? you didn't get enough sleep? you failed at someting and now you're grumpy ? So here i am now, with social anxiety, toxic shame and completely blocked emotions. For last 2-3 years someting started to change with my thinking - i started to ask my self a questions... why the heck am i feeling guilty about my stutter ?! It's not like i do it for fun, or beacause i am lazy or to spite others. I am main victim of this situation and i dont' care how it affects others. My stutter started to feel like i sickness that i want to get rid of, not like something that is a part of me, something that i deserve. It simply started to feel sorry for my self, i feel like i dont deserve it. I feel like my mindset changed a lot, i dont know if i moved forward but i am certainly in different place now compared to few years ago. Thing is... my thinking mind is in different place but my feeling mind is stuck at the same place, i have no power over it. Being a curious kind of guy, i always liked to try and unerstand out how stuff works, getting down to bottoms of things i started to analyze stutter, and i have some theories. We all know that we don't stutter when alone, when no one is listening(even those having very severe stutter) - this, in my opinion proves that stutter is not anatomical/mechanical malfunction. We dont stutter when singing. We dont stutter when we try to act/imitate other person. We stutter less when reading. Many have huge trouble talking on a phone. ​ When we speak, we use words but actually ton of information is relayed to the listener in form of nonverbal communication: loudness, tone, tempo, pitch of our voice. Those nonverbal forms are exposing our feelings about stuff that we are talking about. When someone is highly insecure, or higly ashamed or for other reasons doesn't want to show how he feels about specific subject stutter develops - this actually happens to everyone when faced with highly streesful situation in which we dont want to reveal our true emotions. Stutterers are constantly locked in this higly stressful situation, where they try to alter the way they speak to obscure how they feel. The way i think of speech is like a chain of separate processes that happen very fast one after another: getting an idea of what we want to speak, finding right words, articulating; and probably many more in between. We human have only one "focus device", we can be focused only at one task at the time. When we want to perform second task, we need to put first one on autopilot. Stutterers are focusing on a wrong part of "speech chain" - articulation which supposed to be on autopilot. ​ Why we dont stutter when alone? \- because there's is no one to judge us, no one to recevice our emotions ​ Why we dont stutter when singing? \- because we are expressing someone else's lyrics, pitch and tempo is also predetermined so it's not our emotions, ​ ​ Why we dont stutter when imitating another person ? \- because... well answer lies in the question :), we are showing emotions of other person, not ours ​ Why we stutter less when reading ? \- because we are expressing someone else's creation, even if we add some voice acting while reading those will be still not our emotions. ​ Why we have so much trouble talking on a phone? \- because when on a phone we can realy only on our speech which is broken, we dont have available other nonverbal communication methods like gestures, facial expressions, body language which could help is out in normal face to face conversation ​ In my opinion stutter is caused by trying to hide true self, being ashamed of showing own emotions(by nonverbal) to others in fear of being judged. This can be probably caused for many reason, in my case its narcissistic parent which drove my self esteem down to zero and made me disable showing my emotions completely - i am simply unable to be myself. ​ Thats it, i wanted to throw it in here for a long time. Tell me what you think about it, if you have any other ideas...