Content
Recently acquired stutter So I have very recently acquired a stutter or stammer (very recently, we're talking a few days ago). I suspect that it's likely psychogenic and am due to see a psychiatrist in a couple of days; but I thought I would post my situation here and see if anyone had any insights that might be useful to share during my appointment. Some background: I've been under fairly extreme stress recently which was actually building before the pandemic and which lockdown/isolation only made worse. I eventually reached a point where it became too much and I started experiencing certain psychological symptoms - emotional numbing, dissociation, increased occurrence of motor tics (which existed previously, mostly only appearing when very anxious). I went on in this way for a number of weeks when certain events caused even more stress to be piled on me. I had a short but very strong dissociative episode (a matter of minutes) and when I came out of it, I discovered I would stutter when speaking. The characteristics of my stutter: * Varies in intensity, but never goes away completely. * Is completely new to me, no known previous history of stuttering or vocal tics. * Mostly blocks on certain sounds, occasional repeated words ('it's', 'I' and 'a' especially) * Seems to be stronger when I am talking about things associated with my stress. * Only affects spontaneous speech. If I silently 'read out' or prepare a full sentence in my head, even a long and difficult one, then repeat it aloud, there is no stuttering. * Only affects my native language, when I speak the language of my adopted country there is no stutter (or if there is it's so minor as to be effectively invisible). * Seems to have temporarily replaced a number of my motor tics. When experiencing a strong block, performing a physical tic or action seems to temporarily unblock my speech, at least for those few words. * Is causing me no real emotional distress, despite being a very sudden limitation that should by all rights be very scary. As you might be able to tell from the above, my attitude seems to be one of almost scientific curiosity. It's possible that this may in itself be a symptom of my wider issue; [la belle indifference](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/la_belle_indifference). My sudden stutter seems to be causing my friends and family more distress than it is me. I'm not looking for a diagnosis here, or anything like that, but since this is all very new to me I thought I'd post here and see if anyone had any experience with something similar. Maybe it'll highlight something helpful that I should tell my psychiatrist. Thanks in advance!