Content
Covert Stutter and Sales I saw a post on here from a couple days ago about covert stuttering and it pushed me to post too. I only found / join this sub a couple days ago. I (f23) have stuttered all my life but always relied on workarounds. I suffer from blocks, not repetitions, and i’ve managed to get though my life thus far without really ever having to sit there and force a word out, mostly through avoidance, an extensive vocabulary, help from trusted loved ones, and pauses. Most of the people in my life do not know that I have a stutter until I share that information with them. My workarounds are almost second nature and the fear and shame surrounded blocking has only compounded. The issue is mostly surrounding saying my name, but other words are starting to get stuck I’ve always had this sort of vague dread about eventually hitting a brick wall but i've continued to push it off. Now I am preparing to start a job in sales. I've been unemployed for almost a year, live in NYC, and really need this job. I've spent the last week or so in a visceral panic. I feel so dumb for having not dealt with this for so long. I'm starting to work on the emotions surrounding it with my therapist (and trying to find a speech therapist as well). My fear is that I will not be able to make sufficient progess in time to start this job and will be unable to perform. I was transparent about this issue in my job interviews, as I always am. The people in my life keep reminding me that the hiring manager found me fluent enough to hire me and believes that I can make it work, but of course he did, just like everyone else does. Nobody gets that I am unable to get my words out because I do everything in my power to never let them notice. In a high stress environment like sales (making 100 cold calls per day, saying my name constantly, having to rely on a script, buzzwords that I cannot talk around, verbal performance being #1), I fear that this will impede my success and even my competancy. I am so terrified about the prospect of facing this. Its not even really about the stutter, but the fear surrounding it that reinforces it. I believe that I can do this through hard work and pushing through fear, but I have years and years of maladaptive patterns to unlearn. I don't think I'll be able to do it in time to make this job work and i'm petrified. Any advice about working through blocks would be so, so appreciated.