About the Author: Annika is 18 years old, stutters and clutters. She is a high school graduate. Since she was three, it has influenced her life and it makes her part of the person she is today. It has both shaped her personality, changed her view on life and influenced the way she deals with other people.

I am Annika, 18 years old and I stutter and I clutter. Since I was three, it has influenced my whole life and it makes me part of the person I am today. Both have shaped my personality, changed my view of life and influenced the way I deal with other people.

Over the years it was always different. Sometimes I stuttered more, sometimes I cluttered more. Depending on age and situation, it changed. I started going to speech therapy when I was 4 years old. Back then I came to Manon Spruit, SLP, whom I still go to today. During In my life I was with her in therapy again and again, with breaks in between. With her I learned to accept my speaking and she helped me the most to deal with it and to give me confidence.

In my elementary school time I was twice by myself alone in therapy for several weeks. It was about getting rid of my stuttering and making my speaking “normal”. I was not allowed to speak the way I speak anymore, but with extreme techniques to suppress the stuttering. After 4 weeks in this therapy I had to keep using these techniques and give a presentation about it and about stuttering in general at school. Then I had some negative experiences and got used to not talking about my speaking anymore, except with my parents. So when I switched from elementary school to high school, my classmates didn’t know about it anymore, only my class teacher. The oral grades became stricter and were graded more and I noticed how much harder my speaking could make everything. In 5th/6th grade everything still worked well and it was okay. Then in puberty my speaking changed again. It became faster, more chaotic and for me harder and harder to control. I wanted and still want to always speak slowly and clearly, but sometimes it doesn’t work and it still frustrates me today. In 7th grade, because of the pandemic with Corona, homeschooling also started. For almost 2 years I was no longer directly confronted with speaking, no school, hardly any contacts. And in the few video conferences we had it was all much easier for me than in face-to-face classes.

When school started again, in personpresence, it was a strong change. I withdrew more and more and often lacked the courage to raise my hand. Presentations and spontaneous contributions caused me extreme pressure and the worst was at the beginning of upper secondary school. The oral grades now count more than half and suddenly it is about my Abitur and about my future. The teachers built up extreme pressure from the start of grade 11 and I could hardly stand it. Every lesson I wanted to participate in and the more often I didn’t manage, the worse I felt. Then I started speech therapy again with Manon and talked with my teachers and then it became bearable again. When I managed to raise my hand, I was proud of myself, but the pressure was still there, all the time, every single lesson. In the next school year in grade 12 it started again, the pressure became bigger, the grades stricter and I broke down because of it.

I realized that I couldn’t go on like this and even thought about dropping out of the Abitur. But I decided that my fear and my speaking should not determine me like that. That’s why I chose the step and applied for a disadvantage compensation. With that I wanted to take the pressure off and prevent my Abitur and my grade average from being too influenced by my speaking. From that point on my teachers knew and it became easier. I can hand in some tasks to improve my oral grade and my written exams count proportionally more than my oral performance.

But despite this improvement I will keep these feelings. The teacher asks a question, I know the answer, but I can’t raise my hand. I don’t have the certainty, not the security, whether I can say it slowly, without stuttering. I know in theory how I can control it, but not whether it works atin this moment. I rehearse the answer so long in my head and think if there is any word I cannot say and then it is too late. I listen to the other student and know I could never have said it like her. My answer would have been short and concise and I would have been afraid that the teacher would ask more. I know my Abitur grade would be better without my oral grades. Never in my life have I been better orally than in writing, because my speaking always accompanied me. Sometimes I practice a presentation longer and plan every pause and emphasis to present it perfectly than others even prepare their presentation at all. I think about a presentation weeks before and the feelings the day before I cannot even describe.

But I have learned that this is okay. I have come so far, dared so much and overcome so many things. I have started talking about my speaking again and about the burden of feelings that I carried with me for so long. The only people I could confide in were my parents and my speech therapist Manon. Many tears were shed and for a long time I could only talk about it like this. DuringIn these holidays I helped at a camp Dream. Speak. Live Germany. Here children learn that it is completely okay and normal to stutter and that nobody has to be ashamed of for it. I had to learn that too, and still have to. In this camp I spoke about my speaking and my experiences in front of several people for the first time and I managed to talk about it.

Now I am writing here because I want to keep talking about it. Hardly anyone can really understand these feelings, m. Meeting new people and having to pay so much attention to speaking. At the family table, at meals or in the most everyday things being told you have to speak differently, calmer, slower, more fluent, otherwise people don’t understand you. Not being able to express yourself without concentrating first or still having to control your speaking when you already sat 10 hours in school before. Often I don’t notice how fast I speak and when I hear myself on videos, negative feelings come up. When I am nervous and my heart beats because I have to say something in front of many people and the uncertainty is inside me if I can get it out in this nervousness right now. And also the uncertainty afterwards, how I spoke. Even if it felt good, it may have been too fast and I will probably never have full control, even if I wish it so much.

70 to 80 million people stutter and here we can connect, understand each other and find our own feelings and thoughts again. It is normal and completely okay to stutter and we all should not let it stop us, but do exactly what our heart beats for and what we always wanted in our whole life.