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Rethinking stuttering Hi, I'm relatively new to this subreddit and I've been reading your posts for sometime now. I would like to share my thoughts on feeling shame and guilt when stuttering, and realisations that helped me immensely in my stuttering journey. I feel this could be helpful to you, especially if you're struggling. Firstly, I'd like to state that stuttering is one of the most banalized disorders. Banalisation can be seen in the portrayal of people who stutter in the media and movies. Stuttering is still used as comic relief or a character is portrayed as insecure, pathetic and even stupid. I don't know how many times people even told me it's childish and I could stop to stutter if I just decided to do so. Even in this "woke" time, ignorance of stuttering is enormous. That makes me so mad, because we all know how deep it can cut your core of self-worth. For that reason, I often perceive stuttering as a feeling - an emotional cocktail of shame, guilt, frustration, hopelessness etc. Today I would like to focus on two emotions that I especially struggled with, and I believe a lot of you are too - shame and guilt. I feel shame is the emotion that surrounds stuttering the most. Shame is intrinsically connected with the feeling of self-worth and with feeling how worthy of love we are. And I think it's the biggest cost of stuttering. I was not always ashamed of my stutter. As a child I found it frustrating at most. The shame came in my teenage years when I started to perceive being fluent as being more worthy. The second one, that I think is more covert, is guilt. It took me a very long time to realise it. And it's a product of speech therapists, family and society telling me that I stutter because I didn't practice enough. They sent me a message that it's my choice to stutter. When I was in group speech therapy, I witnessed a young boy shaking and crying in fear and shame of public speaking. The therapist ignored it and told him to use fluency techniques we'd learned. That's when I realised how therapy can traumatise you and how flawed and outdated speech therapies can be. There is often too much focus on how you sound than how you feel. Putting so much worth on fluency creates a feeling that stuttering is bad and needs to be fixed, because fluency equals worth. It increases the feeling of guilt that feeds into shame, resulting in more stuttering. It's toxic to the point it's ableist and discriminatory. Realisation of how others implanted guilt in my disorder shifted my shame to anger. I would even say it empowered me. It pushed me to give myself permission to stutter freely. I keep in mind it's not my fault and it's not my choice, and people's reactions to it are not my responsibility. They're reacting to their own discomfort. I don't need to stop stuttering to be worthy. It sounds banal and logical, but the trick is to really feel it in your core. And it can be hard. I still sometimes struggle with shame and guilt, but every day less and less. My final goal is to feel neutral when I'm stuttering. Irony is, because of this mindshift I stutter much less now. But I still stutter and expect myself to stutter and when I do - I treat it with respect. Also, I would like to add that I'm not against classic speech therapy, but I think we need to pay attention to what therapists' perception of stuttering is. Do they approach it from the position of respect or something that is undesirable and needs to be fixed? I think it makes a big difference. TL;DR Summary: Society still banalises stuttering, even though it's a very complex disorder that impacts the deepest parts of human beings, diminishing self-worth with shame. Shame is often even more increased by guilt, that a lot of people who stutter don't realise they carry. Guilt is often perpetuated by family, therapists etc. that are telling you you stutter because you don't practice enough, insinuating stuttering is a choice. They focus on how you sound, putting worth on fluency and not your well- being. Realising I have a right to stutter, I don't owe fluency and fluency doesn't equal worth - resulting in less stutter. Working towards feeling neutral when stuttering. Also, pay attention to your therapist's attitudes towards stuttering.