My stutter is driving me insane. Having normal conversations with people that made 100000 times harder and more awkward. It’s embarrassing as hell and I’m sick of it.
Conversations with most people I have daily are difficult because it’s hard to keep people listening for that long and it’s very awkward to talk to someone the first time as they expect me to have a stutter. It’s so isolating. Ever since I was a kid everyone just to make fun of me for it. I wish I could talk like everyone else.
I’ve lost so many opportunities to my stutter just think about it. I’ll never a telemarketer, (not really a lost) I’ll never be a voice actor, and how many other jobs require you to speak to others?
James Earl Jones had a stutter during his childhood, and look where he ended up in his life. One of the things I commonly see is that talking and singing use different parts of the brain, so while you may have trouble with a stutter while talking, you may not while singing. That may be something worth looking into.
Anecdotal confirmation that singing did wonders for some stuttering folk I met in my life.
Does speaking a new language bypass a stutter?
No, I can stutter in several languages
You might find some encouragement from the story of King George VI, who spoke with a stutter. If you haven’t seen the movie The King’s Speech, I highly recommend it.
Winston Churchill also had a speech impediment, and yet is remembered for his speeches to parliament.
I recognize that these were people of privilege and you probably aren’t, so that makes things even more difficult. But I do believe that everyone can be useful and a blessing to those around them, even while dealing with a stutter.
I believe Biden also had a stutter when younger.
I remember having a stutter at around age 5-7. I even still remember what it felt like when words got stuck. To me it felt like a kind of stress response. Once the stutter started it was kind of a self-reinforcing reflex. Don’t remember exactly how I got over it, but I think I started preparing how I would say things and pre-vocalize, and once I had gotten the first few words out smoothly it went easier from there. After a while it stopped entirely.
I can empathize.
Had a friend back in school that stuttered. It was stressful as hell just watching him deal with it, so I can imagine how much stress it would feel like, even if he hadn’t expressed much the same things you have.
He ended up finding some stress relief via singing, and only hanging around people that didn’t put pressure on him.
Cool dude; haven’t seen him in years though. He left the state for college (wrestling scholarship), and doesn’t come back except to visit family, so we rarely have time to catch up.
He ended up doing technical writing, like for instructions and textbooks and the like. Freelance now, or was.
I’ve noticed for some people it’s goes away with age.
Mine went away in my teens, but only after learning to sing. (Vocal training, not speech therapy). It did make a sporadic appearance for the next 20 or so years, typically when overly tired or stressed.
It unfortunately returned as I got older. It’s less annoying than aphasia. (I lie, it’s still annoying, and the two together are calm destroying.)
Yeah, I’ve seen it happen a few times over the years. It isn’t always permanent, but once it backs off, it tends to not be as bad when it does pop up.
My aunt had a stutter (and my grandfather too, it’s hereditary?) anyway she did speech therapy for years and is now a teacher.
I think speech therapy has strategies for dealing with stuttering.
I know, I would like to go one day.
I am not a speech therapist, but I bet a lot of it comes down to practicing techniques. Have you ever looked on YouTube to see if there are any free speech therapy videos to give you a head start?
Yeah, there are some. I know about this one guy who’s a comedian (idk what his name is) who had a stutter but found out when he did an impression of somebody it would go away so been doing that. I’ve noticed it’s less common. I heard whistling helps.
Music therapy helped my son a bunch (in line with the other singing recommendations).
I remember a video from way back, where man with a pronounced stutter(no pun intended) was speaking fluently.
An assistant handed him a pair of headphones that time-shifted the audio that he was hearing. I think it was about a 0.5second delay from when something was said, until it was heard in the headphones.
Fully enclosed, over ear headphones.
Worth a try to see if you get any change.
I’ll see if I can find the video.
So, the search term to use on the web and YT is:
‘stutter delayed audio feedback’
Here is a video that demonstrates the effect of DAF
Stuttering Phenomenon #3: Delayed Auditory Feedback
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAQvhUxDA3g
2:15 - Reading a passage without DAF
3:45 - Reading the passage with DAF turned on
I’m not sure if there are any permanent negative affects, so please consult experts, or contact people who have used it extensively already.
Good luck (c:
You can try reading some work of “Prescott Lecky”, maybe try to find a copy of his book, “Self Consistency, A Theory of Personality” he was a school teacher and he conducted an experiment on thousand of students, He used a method called ‘System of ideas’ to cure students of such habits of nail biting and stuttering.
You can give it a try.
Removed by mod
I can easily empathize, it must be exhausting to be the owner of a stuttering voice. Your experience with it and the emotions that followed are pretty much what I would expect any person that is hindered by their stutter to feel after a while. It’s not easy
It is easy to be embarrassed by it, though gh, but it’s probably in your best interest to just frigging own it. For the time being, you will have to work with/around/through it, so, if you can muster the strenght, you could just as well own the stutter with pride. You might not like it, but it IS you currently. Not being embarrassed might make convo’s slightly less intense.
Good luck coping with it all. Love from the internet!
