Changing perceptions- beyond my wildest dreams

Changing perceptions- beyond my wildest dreams Presentations, radio interviews, meeting new people, striking conversations with people on the plane, comfortably using the phone in virtually any situation (train, bus, walking, at my university study room), chatting away with others over meals. These are all things I'm now capable of doing and have done, with almost zero inhibitions or holding back. And that's what stuttering really has been for me since at least when I was 7. Holding back. Don't get me wrong. When I younger than seven, I did stutter. But I've thought hard about this; and while I'm not 100% sure of this theory of my stuttering journey, based on what I now understand about stuttering and myself, it seems to add up. It seems in the beginning, I only had more 'normal' dysfluencies than the average person. There was no fear, no panic, no struggle, no weird facial contortions or having to jerk up and down slapping my leg to get my words out. None of that was natural or predetermined. That all came after- when I started feeling there was something wrong with my speech. First it was fear and a negative reaction beginning to develop on my normal dysfluencies (from e-e-e-ighteen to e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eighteen) causing them to worsen. At this point I'd already started to feel the shame and embarrassment at my not-so-normal speech. Then it was going to speech therapy, and being told to slow down my speech. Good enough, I actually saw some results. But like I said, I'd already begun to develop the fear of stuttering. At seven, when I once said the word 'deny' I went 'd-d-deny', and some part of me thought: "oh shit, I'm stuttering again". Unrealistic expectations. That could have happened to anyone, no matter how articulate. Then it was the anticipation of stuttering. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I was reading on my table in class and I had to say the word 'at'. I could feel like I'd stutter on the word- something like a-a-a-a-a-a-a-t. With the already developed fear I definitely didn't want to do that, so I simply stalled, thinking back to how I'd been taught to talk slower. Looked a bit stupid, but I was able to get the word out after about 5 seconds of dread. This was probably when the 'silent' blocking began. But I wasn't so lucky. Stalling or talking slow didn't always seem to work. No matter how long I waited, sometimes I could never get a word out. Then I must have realised: "hang on, what if I just say this word instead? Similar meaning, and I'm pretty sure I can say that". Good enough. Until that stopped working all the time either. Then I'd occasionally stutter as I did before I was seven, and every time I'd give myself the message that that was absolutely something to be avoided, a complete and utter humiliation. That's when the visible blocking began. Can't remember what word is was, but 9/10 year old me could feel the fear, anticipation and panic of not being able to immediately get a word out. Sometimes I just wouldn't say anything. But then one time, I must have tried to say something anyway. Combine that with the holding back mentality I had built up, of not wanting to be perceived as a stutterer, and like a tug-of-war, my infamous facial contortions had begun to develop. That soon became a thing of its own, and I mastered all the intricacies of it. When the panic wasn't too high and the block wasn't too hard, I could probably get away with a slight just about perceptible facial contortion. Other times it would just look like a full on explosion. Ironically, I probably got more humiliation from that than I ever did from my original more-normal-dysfluencies-than-average stutter. But I would always go for that, pretty much forgetting how I used to stutter. From this point onward and during my teenage years to early adulthood, speaking situations consisted of: 1. A build-up of negative anticipation, followed by me trying as hard as possible not to stutter. 2. Avoiding words, substituting them, rearranging sentences, maybe just not saying everything I want to say or express. 3. Upon failing that, sometimes getting lucky by stalling 4. Other times being forced to try to say the word, and then getting the weird facial contortions and other secondary behaviours I'd built up upon their limited success like tapping my leg, jerking up and down. 5. Sometimes I'd give up with step 4, and end up stuttering like my pre-seven year old self At home, I'd usually skip steps 1-3 and move on to 4-5. In the outside world, it was generally steps 1-3 and often 4. Every now and then, step 5. And it fucking sucked. I kinda knew that a lot of my stutter was developmental. But daily I'd convinced myself that most of it was genetic, and if only there was some pill and I'd be cured. Then I joined a speech programme, and started reading John Harrison's work (Redefining Stuttering). I began to understand my stuttering system better, and why certain techniques I'd tried over the years had only temporary effects- e.g. reading aloud, rehearsing by my self, etc. I saw that my stuttering behaviour was primarily fear-based, which built a sense of holding back, and therefore causing the struggle and tension I'd become so used to. And so, I began to develop new behaviours and habits. These were all geared towards not avoiding words and sounds and saying exactly what I wanted to say. No 'ums' or any other tricks I'd developed. But this alone wasn't enough to bring down all of the fear. What really destroyed the fear, and therefore the holding back, was voluntary stuttering. Stuttering deliberately in a controlled away taught by the speech course I'm on. The complete anti-thesis to what I'd been about. I did that enough times in as many situations as possible, and guess what happened? The fear, tension, sense of holding back, anticipation of stuttering, and the 'actual' stuttering itself. All of that has dramatically reduced, to almost negligible levels most of the time\*. My brain just doesn't have a reason to use all of that developed behaviour anymore now that I've showed myself something new and better. Surprise blocks are usually quite rare now, and quite manageable with the techniques I've learned. The last time I had a block and avoided a word was almost 3 months ago. Before that it was two months before that. I'm going to be bold and say if I keep at it, there'll come a time when I never block again. I've now gone back to my original way of stuttering- when I'm not using a voluntary stuttering methods. Simply having slightly more dysfluencies than the average person\*\*. And by having done a lot of voluntarily stuttering, this doesn't even trigger any fear or panic in me anymore. So when I do get a dysfluency, there's simply no struggle and it doesn't even subconsciously register (from e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ighteen to e-e-ighteen). The point of all of this? Perceptions and behaviours can change. I wouldn't have had the mindset and behaviours I have now over a year ago. I would have laughed if I had been told this is what I'd be now. And I'm even starting to forget my old mentality. For me, the key was being able to honestly observe myself and discard junk I'd built up over the years ,which I knew could in no way be natural or genetic. It took a speech course and other people to get me on this path, along with some wider reading and understanding (going to once again name drop Redefining Stuttering, since it's free). What's it going to take for you? \*I wouldn't be surprised if one day this went from negligible to zero. 16 years of stuttering. In under a year I've made a dramatic change. In another 16 years will all traces of my old stutter be gone? I wouldn't bet against it. \*\*To be quite frank, this is often negligible.