Is Validation The Recipe To Not Stuttering?

I gave myself a little break over the last few days. I was experimenting with the content of this post and I’ve spotted a little feature of my stutter. A feature that I think I share with other stutterers and that I believe could potentially be exploited to my and your advantage.

I’ve paid a close attention to my speech and I’ve found that I stutter a lot more when I do not feel that what what I have to say is needed. For example, I will stutter a lot more when working in a group and suggesting something that I am not sure will be of any use. I guess it all comes down to confidence. But there is an element of certainty and acceptance in it also. The ideal situation is to feel that everything I say is valid and crucial to the purpose of me sharing it. It’s all about self-validation.

If you think about your stutter I bet you stutter a lot less when talking for socializing purposes, and not working as part of a team to achieve a certain goal. There are many obvious reasons for this such as being more relaxed and less under pressure when socializing. However I think another reason could be because, when socializing, the purpose of everything you say is to create some sort of connection with the people around you, and not trying to express some sort of complicated idea that may or may not be rejected. Therefore validation of what you are saying is instant when chilling out with some friends as you already have a connection. When speaking to someone you have just met, you stutter a lot more. This fits in with my theory as you are in fact searching for validation and you do not feel any of it until the person you are interacting with hears what you are saying and responds to it.

So that’s a pattern that I have spotted. It really relates to the stutter indirectly as when we feel validated, we are more confident. However using “confidence” to control your stutter is very difficult as if you are not confident, it is hard to become confident on the spot. Becoming validated on the spot is also difficult however I think its a lot easier. You need only to feel that you have a right to say what you want.

There is a little more to it. This blog has really inspired me to try and use my time to help others around me. I feel like it will lead to a more satisfying and fulfilled life. The last few days, I have actively been trying to help someone with every single thing I do. Helping was always on my mind. I noticed that because of this my stutter became a lot better. I believe that this is because during the last few days, the purpose of my life was to help others and I felt that every single thing I did was just part of the big project of helping. I ate so that I could help later. I slept so that I could help tomorrow. All of a sudden there was validation in everything I did. It was all part of the plan that was unveiling itself before me.

The further validation came from the fact that I happen to be a Christian. Christianity teaches us to live our life after the plan that God has planned out for us. This plan may not be the easiest or the most comfortable, but it guarantees everyone who follows it happiness and a place in heaven. Conveniently I have always believed in serving God by example. If you can inspire someone to live their life the way you do, then you have effectively made them a non-believer who follows Jesus’s teachings. And if someone follows those teachings, then sooner or later they will get to know God and become saved. That’s just a non-intrusive way I have always tried to use, to inspire by example instead of debates and annoying advertisements. Anyway, believing that I am living my life the way I am supposed to, is the best source of validation I have so far found. Not to mention that it is correct, as a Christian, that is exactly how you are supposed to feel.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not telling anyone to convert here. If you are of a different religion or simply atheist, I respect that. My advice here is to look for validation and while Christianity is one firm way of achieving validation, there are many others equally as valid.

Of course that’s just my take on things.  Feel free to contribute through comments.

Have A Nice Day!

Possibly The Top Notch Technique For Nailing Phone Calls And Relaxing

I had to make a few phone calls today. For someone who stutters, that’s never fun. People can often react unexpectedly if you start to stutter on the phone (I shared a few stories on this post). These moments of tension and fear while speaking to someone far away are the worst when you are on the line with someone who you do not know. Today it was the local clinic. I’m supposed to get some vaccines and surprisingly, the phone calls scare me a lot more than the needle 🙂

I have a way of making phone calls from home. There is some background about why it’s effective so I figured I might just share it with you all. That way if you stutter, you can use it. If you don’t, you can get the brownie points of any stuttering friend you might have 🙂 As for everyone else I going to provide you with a simple method of dealing with stress.

This method goes back to my speech therapy. Preparing for a German oral exam. One method of keeping the stutter under control is the use of a “totem”. Don’t worry, the is no magic involved. The idea is actually simple and psychology heavy. What you want is to set up some sort of mental connection with an environment where you are comfortable. Comfort=Relaxation=Less Stutter. Now, obviously, you cannot carry a couch and a TV around with you. Fortunately, what you can do, is artificially create an item that will represent relaxation to you. For me this was a rubics cube. I would make sure that every time I did something relaxing, I was solving my rubics cube. After a few weeks, the rubics cube becomes a “totem”. Whenever you are having to face a stressful scenario, bring out the cube, start playing with it and you automatically start to relax. You get how it works. The brain spots the connection between the cube and relaxation. It thinks “Hmm. When I’m happy and relaxed, I have a rubics cube. Therefore when I hold a rubics cube I should be relaxing“. Works on the same principle as the fact that you are more happy when you force yourself to smile.

The totem method is actually one of the most successful tricks in my bag of anti-stutter measures. Although the stutter is still there and very noticeable, it’s not as bad as usually so I’m happy. I recommend you try it, might work for you also.

Back to the phone calls. Chances are, you are making the important calls from home. Calling the bank or clinic, you need your important documents and those are probably at home. What most of us stutters (and everyone else) fail to realize is that your home has the strongest totem in the world. Your bed. Ever since you were born, your brain has been told that the bed is a place of relaxation. Sometimes also pleasure 😉 , but always relaxation. So, if anyone has hidden cameras in my bedroom, they will see me get up from my desk. Get a notebook for writing down appointment dates, happily jumping into my bed and getting cozy. Your brain will be fooled into thinking that it’s snooze time and before you know it, you are trying to get the on the good side of the receptionist without a single stutter. The bed saves the day.

I’ve used this method for a few months and it genuinely hardly ever fails me. The connection formed in your brain, associating the bed with relaxing, is so strong that no amount of stress or nerves can break it. Not to mention that it’s getting renewed everyday. So go ahead, try it. Get in your bed, give it a few minutes and start phoning strangers. It works for me and although there is no magical cure for a stutter, the reason behind this method probably makes it quite effective on most people. Naturally, it’s not going to sort your life out. You cannot stay in bed all day.

I’m going to explore this little method of mine further. We cannot carry a bed around, but I’m thinking that maybe wearing a set of pajamas underneath clothes might help. Let me know what all you fellow stutterers out there think. If you try it, let me know if it works for you.

Good Luck, I hope this helps someone!

I’m going to write a few informative posts next to keep things balanced a little… Not looking forward to that

Are We All Disabled? Are We All Lazy?

A stutter is officially a “disability“. You can call it a speech impediment, but it’s all part of the tree of disabilities. I do not like to think of myself as disabled and I advice that anyone who might sometimes be considered “disabled” stays away from that word.

The thing about the word “disabled” is that in our minds, it carries the connotations of someone who is less competent in everyday life. I believe this assumption is fundamentally wrong. I’ve heard stories of people without legs climbing the highest peaks in the world. And if people without legs are able to get themselves places that many people with legs couldn’t ever dream of, then obviously having(or not having) legs does not influence how far or where you can go. The only person influencing that is you, with your decision.

This misunderstood nature of disabilities causes us to abuse that we are “disabled“. Many people who consider dyslexia as a disability stop all efforts of learning to read and write. People who consider their stutter a disability, stop all efforts to use speech when they should. You should see my body language game 🙂

What I’m trying to get at, is the moment you tag yourself “disabled” you will create an excuse for yourself. That excuse will then be a universal reason for your shortcomings. The reason why I’m single is because I stutter. The reason why I fit on the introverted scale is because I stutter. The reason why I settled for a small coffee when I paid for a large one is because I stutter. While in reality, I could get a girlfriend, I’ve been born introverted and should embrace it and I could have easily gotten my money’s worth on that coffee, but I was too lazy. We see disability as a certain incompetence in life and then we make what we see, the case. The line “you are what you see in the mirror” has floated about for a long time. We nod our heads in approval, pretending to see some deeper meaning. Let’s actually think about it. If you look at a mirror and see someone with a speech impediment and therefore disabled and socially challenged. You will make yourself become socially challenged. Viewing yourself as disabled is your inner attempt to be lazy. Don’t do it.

I’ve got another interesting example. I’ve always been dreadful at geography. There is no known disability that has a symptom of just being dreadful at geography. Because of this, I just had to sit the fuck down and start learning countries. There was no other option. I pulled myself through and during the last years of it I was the best in class. Now imagine what would happen if I was terrible at writing (My handwriting looks like some sort of ancient language, but that’s beside the point). Our society knows a disability that has a symptom of being bad at writing. It’s called dyslexia. Now look at my options. I now have a choice. I can now give up on writing and get away with it. This was not an option with geography, because geograslexia is not a thing. See what’s happened, the tag “disabled” gives you an option of giving up. It’s an excuse for being lazy.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not having a swing at dyslexia. I am dyslexic. The issue I’m pointing out is that we are living in a lazy society. The way we treat dyslexia, is a direct representation of this. The moment I pass the dyslexic test (I have not heard of a single person that took this test and failed), I am given extra time in all my exams. Teachers stop pressuring me to do good in English. I’m allowed to drop English before everyone else. I become a lost cause in the field of English. My example of the man with no legs, climbing Mt. Everest demonstrates that having a difficulty related to a certain action, does not mean that you should not pursue achievement in that action. People with dyslexia should be told to put more work into English as that is their difficulty. They should not be excused from English lessons or given extra time in exams. People with a stutter should not be excused from speaking exams or interviews. That’s lazy!

You stutter? Tough, tell the interviewer “I stutter, I can’t help it, let me finish if I block“. All of a sudden you have turned your “disability” into a channel through which you can flood the room with confidence and power. Your chances of landing the job have probably more than doubled from the initial “I cannot attend the interview because of my disability“.

I know people who stutter have landed themselves in the highest places, where speaking is literally their job. Bruce Willis is an example. Not to even mention the dozens of well-known comedians who stutter. I know dyslexic people who have achieved ultimate success in the field of writing. The Great Gatsby is arguably one of the greatest American novels. Guess what? F. Scott Fitzgerald was dyslexic. I could go on forever.

To conclude, if you are a person that has one of the “disabilities” do not think of it as a set-back. Having a “disability” means you have a different set of tools. You have the advantage of developing unbelievable amounts of will-power simply by living your life. You have the ability to feel the pain of many others around you, when they stumble over their shortcomings. You have an immediate common ground with a large amount of people. When you do something great, people will use you as a source of motivation and inspiration (I wouldn’t recognize the face of a single person who climbed Everest. The guy who did it without legs, his face I could recognize instantly). That is how you should use your “disability“. Do not spend your life missing out.

If you want to add to or dispute this, go ahead.

Tip Of The Iceberg (Follow-Up)

This is a follow-up on the last post. So if you haven’t read it, please do. Most of you probably still won’t, but I warned you!

Since the last post I’ve been surfing and reading other people’s blogs where they expresses their memories of stutters (sometimes a stutter can just go away with age). One of those posts, I thought was absolutely incredible. It contained a series of poems written by the author of the blog, when they were little and struggling with their stutter. I was given permission to post these poems on here, I thought they would shed a light a little on what can be found under the tip of the iceberg. The stuff that people have to face on their own. The blog is called “I am beautiful” and the post I am sharing with you today is called “Phases Of A Stutterer“. Here is the first poem:

You never thought I could do it

Never thought I tried

I wouldnt speak much

only cried

I asked for help and help I got

To gain control and confidence

To gain a decent thought.

I’m not stupid.

You just don’t have the patience

Because words got stuck and didn’t make sense

You labeled me as dense.

That was long ago

Since I felt so low

But now today

I prove what i say

I asked for help and help I got

I tried and tried and fought and fought

I’m smarter now

Smarter than you thought

I’m not as quiet as you once knew

Why do you think I am babbling to you?

I speak my mind,

unafraid

So what if i stammer?

I dont mind

I’ve changed for the good

and to think,

I never knew I could.

The author explains that this was written during one of the better days in terms of stuttering. This other poem however was written during one of the worse ones:

Please help me Maker, for I am flawed

My eyes don’t work, my speech is stalled

My ears are deceiving, my touch is unbelieving,

My heart is just plain wrong.

Please Maker repair my eyes and help me see

See the truth around me

Please Maker, fix my speech

So my feelings will not always be out of reach

Please Maker train my ears

So the things I hear won’t bring me to tears

Please Maker reprogram my touch

so little things won’t hurt so much

…But please Maker, please steel my heart

So petty things won’t have to matter from the start

And this one was my favorite. I feel that it expresses what goes on in my head during my bad days:

if only the words swirling out of my mouth

crashing into each other like train wrecks

and screeching yo a halt, leaving skid marks in its wake

would straighten out and move accordingly

like the soldiering ants in their straight little lines

following each other with perfect speed

perfect spaces and even paces

if only words weren’t so hard to say

no more constricting syllables tying me in knots

squeezing the breath from my lungs

and causing stares

and fears coupled with rising tears

i would be that person laughing in that room

or that person presenting on stage

not that person so pulled by rage

but a normal person without the difficulties of speech

without the train wreck of words

jumbling me up until words are nothing mere than a mass

of incoherent nothingness

my thoughts suppressed

every time i show weakness

every time i open my mouth

cautious and useless

So there you have a little bit of the submerged iceberg revealed through poetry. I do not know if the same is the case for others, but for me and my other stuttering friend, these poems are incredibly accurate at expressing the feelings we sometimes feel.

Hope you like these and thanks to jadeterese (author of the content) for sharing these allowing me to re-post them here.

Tip Of The Iceberg

I want to introduce an idea that is often used to help stutterers express how they feel. This makes it easier for them to accept it, if the therapy is not successful (like in my case).

Stuttering originally is not a problem. What makes it a problem is the fact that if you stutter from an early age you are at some point going to get bullied. If you stutter from a mature age, you will still get bullied, by yourself.

We all insult/bully ourselves more than anyone else ever could… “If someone treated you like you treat yourself, how long would you let them be your friend?”.

I was bullied for my stutter in nursery. Don’t get me wrong, it was one guy and he got sorted out after a week or two. I’m not trying to victimize myself here. However all the bully has to do is plant a number of ideas into your head. Once that’s done, you will bully yourself and grow those ideas. Before you hit school, you have a problem. All those little insults have now grown into massive fuckers of inner self-esteem issues.

Yet, to everyone. You’re just a kid who blocks now and then. This is where the iceberg comes in. You can only see the upper part of an iceberg, the rest is hidden (under water).

The same goes for a stutter. I believe that a stutter, like any other speech disability is a psychological problem. It does not hurt you or others. Instead you hurt yourself by creating false ideas. “I’m wasting people’s time”, “They’ll think I’m weird”, “They’ll treat me like a freak”. Old ideas like these are what really makes a stutter, what it is.

I often mention accepting your stutter. What this represents, is removing all the hidden parts of the iceberg. Once you do, you realize that you do not have a problem. Otherwise, the ideas keep growing, every time they grow, they get harder to remove. Every time they grow, your stutter will get more in the way of your happiness.

Removing them is not easy. I still have some, but I’ve come a long way. I did this (and I recommend you do too) by speaking to people. See how much they actually care. Half never even noticed it. This proved me wrong when I thought that everyone judges me for my stutter. Half the people don’t realize it exists! The other half mostly did not care. So you see. I had made myself believe that everyone views it negatively. Blind exaggeration of the less than a 10% of people I come across that find it annoying. And let’s face it if you look for dick heads in the public, you’re probably gonna get about a 10% success rate.. Note that those people aren’t purely annoyed by stuttering. They get annoyed by anything someone does that they don’t do.

The same goes for all insecurities. It can be a stutter, but it can be height, appearance, voice, dyslexia. Even things like skin color or nationality. It’s incredible how many people bring themselves down over the littlest of things.

Think of all the negative you see in a mirror and ask yourself. Where did this opinion come from. There will be 2 answers for all your inner issues. “I made it up” and “I heard it from someone trying to hurt me”. We all must fight all these false ideas.

I got all this from Christianity. The bible explains that God is perfect and we are all made in his image. Therefore each and every one of us is perfect in God’s eyes. All we need to do is accept our excellence and deny all negative assumptions we have made. You don’t need to be Christian to believe this. This is a great idea to live by and I’m certain that it’s 100% accurate.

Good Luck

Phone Calls And The Things That Go Wrong

Phones have revolutionized the world. Instant connection to anyone on earth. All you need a little money to pay now and then to stay “connected“. That’s great and without phones it would be a different world (a lot less salesmen over the weekends). Unfortunately they are not the most stutter-friendly devices. I’m going to share a few experiences when my stutter was trying to get in the way of my phone conversation.

One very common stutter is a “block”. A block when for some reason the muscles around the vocal cords or the diaphragm tenses up and prevents any sound from escaping. Basically renders you speechless, except not the surprised speechless, the stuttering speechless. I’ll talk more about these in a future post. I block often, especially before starting a conversation. It’s almost my signature move, walk up, smile, block and then talk. My blocks only last a moment so it’s not a big problem.

Last week, I had to call my bank to make sure that they are aware of my new address. You can see the situation. Calling some help line where people have a very passive attitude and are probably playing solitaire while they try to help. So a lady picks up, does the “How can I help you?” line and just sits there expecting an answer. I like to be the first to speak over the phone. Just a preference. Unfortunately Murphy’s law was clearly at work here. She started and caught me off guard. Naturally I failed to avoid my block and full pelt face planted right into it. We sat there in silence for a few moments as I tried to get my shit together, then she hangs up. Probably assumed that the line didn’t connect or it was some prank call. It’s funny and a little humiliating, but happens often with customer service centers. People are a lot less patient, as they have a line of calls waiting. This is why I actually prefer the automated things. I don’t want to speak on the phone, I want to press a button and have someone understand what I want. I had no other option but to redial and hope for someone else. This time Murphy was clearly walking his dog cause the guy that answered was probably finishing off his Mountain Dew and I got to speak first. There you go, a happy end.

If you stutter and also have this problem, I advice you to keep trying and don’t accept defeat. Eventually there will be someone drinking Dew to save you 🙂

The other story only happened once, you need the person to be in a loud environment so they can’t hear everything that happens on the other side. The more cliché type of stutter is repetition of a certain s-s-s-sound. It’s a lot less violent than a block and people are a lot more used to it. I’m a full package with my stutter so I get nearly all the stutters, this one included. This happened a few months back (maybe a year actually). I was talking to a guy I had met recently at my job. He working, doing some sort of physical stuff. Sounded like he was smashing glasses. Anyway, somewhere mid conversation, the stutters started to appear, mostly repetition, but blocks also. These things happen so I didn’t care much, but he did. I don’t think he knew I stutter and assumed that it was the call dropping. “Mate you’re cutting out.”, “YOU’RE CUTTING OUT”, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU”. Before I could explain, he hung up and switched to texting. While this sounds really awkward, I actually found it really funny. Felt like I pranked him.

What the phone does, is remove all other medium of interaction except for speech. People can usually see when I stutter or block because there are certain tics that come with it (will post on this also). Over the phone however, they only hear you’re voice. They can’t tell what’s happening if I suddenly stop talking and that’s why you get all these strange and wonderful responses.

I hope you found this post as entertaining as I find these situations when they happen. Do you have any phone related stutter incident you want to share?

Things We Should Do When Interacting With Someone Who Stutters

We all mean well. At least, most of the time. Almost everyone I speak to, tries to make my life easier. Those who don’t mean well, try to make it more difficult. An example of that was one girl I met at a big party thrown by one of my friends. The moment she found out I stutter she started using long words. Obviously people who stutter hate long words (not true!). Actually, now that I think of it, she was probably just very educated with rich parents. But you get the idea, some people are mean. The majority of us however, will try to help when we are having a conversation with a stutterer. So here is a list. You are going to meet someone who stutters at some point in your life. This list should make it a lot easier for that stutterer (and anyone else) to like you.

1. Do not finish people’s words/sentences for them. If you see someone struggling, the natural reaction is that you can help them out. Saying “please” is easy for you, but for me, it’s the greatest challenge (the sudden ‘p’ sound kills me every time). The reason you shouldn’t help out is because of what it suggests to the stutterer. It might mean that you are in a hurry. In that case, the stutterer feels that you are inconvenienced by their disability. You might well be, but if you let it show, the stutter will get worse and you will be worse off. The other reason has a lot to do with respect. If I have something to say, I expect everyone to shut the hell up and listen. So do you and so does everyone else. The last thing I want is everyone getting involved in a game of stutter-pictionary, trying to guess what I’m about to say. Imagine a group of 5 people trying to help a wheelchair user across a road, not only would they end up ripping the person apart (probably the wheelchair also), it would make the person feel incompetent.
2. Don’t bring it up. Confronting someone about their disability is generally something you should avoid. It’s a touchy topic for a lot of people as they often believe that it makes them worse than others. Bringing someone’s stutter up by saying something like “dude, you stuttered a lot there” will not get you a good reaction. The other extreme of course is avoiding the conversation when the stutterer brings it up. If they do bring it up, they have probably accepted it as part of their life and will feel comfortable talking about it. So my advice would be to be careful and not bring it up, but if your friend does, be ready for self-depreciating humor, a serious heart to heart discussion or being assaulted by a torrent of tears and feelings.
3. Don’t force them to do something. It happens often. “Hey dude, can you order us 3 beers, 1 with juice, 4 portions of chips and 1 big tub of onion rings?”. Then they look at you with a smug face as you realize what’s coming. You pull out the puppy eyes and hope for the best. Ordering things is a big thing for people who stutter, especially when the order is long. If you have a friend who stutters and you have to order some food, you are in a tough situation. Forcing them to order will not be fun for them, but you don’t want to treat them like a child who can’t order for themselves. I cut a deal with one of my friends, she goes basically everywhere I go. When a big order falls on me she asks “Can you remember all of that?”. Depending on my answer she will go with me to help out with some of the order. We do this only with people we don’t know. If it’s a group of close friends, I tend to just back out and blame the stutter. Your friends will always understand. Backing out is completely cool if the order is clearly too long. If you stutter, always remember that it is an option. If you don’t stutter, remember to let someone back out if they want to. There is a great post about this situation here.
4. Listen. Speaking can be a challenge for most stutterers. Sometimes a huge amount of effort goes into something that I say. There is nothing worse than hearing “Sorry, what was that?”. Fortunately when repeating things, I stutter a lot less. Nevertheless listen to people. This goes for interacting with everyone. Nobody likes being ignored. I imagine in most cases we don’t pay much attention to having to repeat ourselves. It’s so easy. The difference with a stutter is that you notice every single time someone isn’t listening because a little voice in your head goes “See all that effort, now do it all again”. I have no evidence, but I think if I didn’t stutter, I would be a more tolerant with people who don’t listen.
5. Do not interrupt. This ties in with some of the above. Interrupting means that the stutterer will have to restart whatever they were saying. It also ties in with finishing words and sentences for them. It’s rude and no one likes to be interrupted. Again someone who stutters, i think, is a lot more likely to notice you interrupting them as they have to put in a more conscious effort to repeat what they said.

To conclude, be polite. Making friends with people who stutter (or people in general) is easier if you’re polite. All of the above are really general knowledge and will definitely improve everyone’s social game if followed. The only difference is that someone with a stutter or any speech impediment is more likely to notice you getting these wrong. This is because they are likely to have their head in the conversation a little more.

If you disagree with any of the above please let me know. This is my take on this and people’s opinions may vary. If you want to add to this or dispute my advice, go ahead. I may be wrong.

See You

Things People Think Are True About Stuttering

Before I do anything else, I should clear up some misconceptions about stuttering. The biological causes of stutters are still quite mysterious and over time, as you would expect, people have made their own theories. These range from being possessed by demon to not learning to speak correctly. Naturally everything I write here is my take on these things and there will be exceptions (we all know the shit demons can do from the exorcist 🙂 ). Some of these are quite entertaining.

1. People who stutter are stupid/slow. I think I’ve heard this one for just about every single disability. People have a tendency to look at someone who is in some way disadvantaged and exaggerate their problem by claiming that they are stupid. This then leads to a lot of disrespect towards the given individual and at this point you’re just a small step away from hate crime. It is not true. I think a lot of people assume this about some stuttering individuals as one method we are taught for controlling the stutter is speaking slowly. We might then seem to struggle to process simple questions, while in reality we are avoiding the high chance of making someone uncomfortable by wildly stuttering in front of them. In fact to contradict this idea, one quite well accepted theory for stuttering is that the stutterer is thinking too fast and so unable to synchronize their speech with trail of thought. Reading can help synchronize it and apparently that is why some claim it can cure stutters.
2. Dealing with stuttering is easy, just do … It is easy to think that stutter is caused by one single thing and there is a single remedy for it. In reality, everyone stutters differently and for a different reason. It can be a traumatic event, it can be poor coordination of your vocal chords and diaphragm. It can be one of the things that you’re born with. It can even be a certain type of powerful medication prescribed to people with epilepsy (mentioned on this blog). In most cases, the cause of the stutter is unknown.
3. People who stutter lie a lot more. This one drives me nuts. In fact I tried to hit a kid for saying it in nursery. Unfortunately, i didn’t do to well at that and he then hit me. I started crying and he got in trouble (mission success.. I guess). This one I think comes from the fact that everyone has certain disfluencies in their speech. When we lie, this number of disfluencies increases as we are trying to make something up on the spot, or we are just nervous. Therefore is someone who has only just met me, will notice that I have a lot more disfluencies when I answer his questions. They will then assume “He is just lying to me through his teeth”.. and that’s how it starts.
4. You can test if people stutter by making them write something down and seeing if they repeat themselves. This is another childhood one. It was early school, learning all the letters and writing down simple words and sentences. After the next 15 minutes, I became the greatest con in the eyes of my class mates. I was the guy who pretended to stutter, but didn’t actually. The sentences I wrote down were clear evidence. I never thought much of this until I heard someone say it in public a few months back. Can you imagine the type of person? You probably got it right, he was a big meaty rig drenched in cheap deodorant, hair glistening with gel. He wore an “I LOVE BAD BITCHES” t-shirt and was studying physical education (based on his bag). I think what some people expect from a stutterer writing is th-thi___s ssssort-rt-rt-rt of-f th-th-thing. As interesting as this would be, a stutter is a speech impediment and as it says on the tin, it only affects speech. Thank god for that, the name of this blog would not make sense 🙂
5. If you stutter, you always stutter. “Hey dude, how come you managed to make that phone call to your gran without a single stutter?” I get this one a lot. In many cases, especially if the stutter is psychologically caused, you will only stutter in certain situations. I for example stutter a lot more when I’m stressed, nervous or tired. But it gets more interesting, I don’t stutter at all when I’m drunk (it’s tempting, I know), I don’t stutter when I’m driving a car, riding a bike or a horse or flying a plane. I stutter a lot near my parents and any other mature adults, not so much around my friends and a lot more when talking with someone at a till.. It’s weird, but all it shows you is that there is a chance that if you have a stuttering friend, you might not find out about it until a very particular situation. My high school English class found out I stutter after 2 years of everyday interaction. What blew it was me having to read out a few pages from a book. You get used to these situations, when everyone looks and wonders what the f*** you were trying to do with your mouth just there.

I’ll cut it at 5, it’s a nice round number. Keep in mind that these are the extremes, most people I come across are actually accepting and tolerant. It’s only now and then that you find someone completely misinformed. Now that I got this out there, I can start talking about the more fun stuff like my many stories where the stutter decides to be a douche.

See You

Should I Write It Down

The name of this blog represents a phrase which has always meant a lot to me. It has a lot of applications. You could use it when you are contemplating whether something you have just heard is worth writing down. You can use it when in a class or a meeting when BOSS says something important. It’s a useful phrase. However for me and over 70 million of other individuals, this phrase means a lot more…

We, the 70 million use this phrase when we accept ultimate failure. When we realize that there is just no point trying to say something. You might as well write it down, it will be faster, easier and you won’t look like you just swallowed a jalapeño.

I don’t know if it’s working, but I’ve tried to build suspense during these last 2 paragraphs. I’m hoping you’re sitting there wondering what do I and these 70 million do and why the phrase is so important. You might not care, but I’ll tell you anyway. See I’ve just introduced you to the main topic of this blog, life through the eyes of a stuttering person.

You know you’re doing good when someone you just met doesn’t know anything about you except for the fact that you stutter. That’s the stage we’re at now. You don’t really need to know about me cause that would bore you… Who wants to hear about others? So, I’m young, going into further education, single (always have been), male(should mention that) and I’m actually really happy with my life. Sort of living the dream.

Had my stutter ever since a certain traumatic event, which I won’t bring up. No it wasn’t parents.. Both still alive and happily married (Thank God). I’ve really hated it and myself for it initially. I tried all the remedies, even over 2 years of therapy, no success. Some problems don’t have solutions, my stutter is an example. But if there is no solution, is it really a problem?

I decided to start this blog a few hours ago because I came across someone with a stutter, except they were at the stage I was a few years back. I’m hoping that by sharing some stories of daily life encounters and memories, I can help a few other stutterers out there feel better. If you don’t stutter, then you might at least find out about how you should go about interacting with someone who stutters.

I’ve had some mild blogging success before, but nothing major. My friends say I see the world in a cool way that no one shares.. Apparently I’m an INFJ personality or something like that (aptitude tests)… I live a busy life, full of stress and I need this blog to just sort of spill out now and then. Expect frequent posts.

Anyone got any stutter related stories or experiences they want to share?

Catch you later!