Learning to accept your stutter
Hey all! I wanted to know how PWS learn to accept their stutter. What has been helpful to you in accepting what is and embracing your true self? Thank you for helping me gain a deeper understanding of what it is like to accept your stutter!
Hi Chloe and thank you for your important question.
What has helped me are several things. But mostly People and Insight. People who saw me for who I was, the person behind the stutter, with my personality and my skills, and who made me see that too. Also other people who stutter who showed me I was not alone, and who helped me to get through my struggles, helped me to understand stuttering, and taught me the importance of paying in forward.
And the insight that I am not my stutter, I’m so much more. That I should not feel shame, but feel pride, as I’m jumping hurdles all day every day, and still moving on, with my head up high. If others have a problem with my speech, that’s up to them. I’m good enough. And my stutter? That’s just how I talk.
So please help us to make PWS talk, just the way they want. Whether that’s with help of techniques, or just the way if comes out. As long as we talk, we’re good. 😉
Keep (them) talking
Anita
Thanks for your reply Anita! Your message is really inspiring and makes me really happy to hear it! You are good enough, and I’m proud of how far you have come!
Thank you for this really important question.
I gradually but completely changed my attitude towards stuttering about 20 years ago. Prior to then, I was obsessed with the desire to become a fluent speaker. I attended numerous fluency shaping programs and refreshers, and often practiced fluency shaping techniques intensively for long periods of time.
But I never was able to maintain my fluency gains in the real long term – it just required too much work, and too much effort. And there were many relapses; I just couldn’t maintain the intensity I needed.
Finally, I reached this conclusion: What does it matter? Is it really worth all that effort to transform myself into someone I’m not? Why don’t I just accept myself as I am, as I have always been, and as I’m likely to continue to be – a person who happens to stutter.
People have different areas that they excel in, and other areas that may be challenging for them. Consistency of speech fluency for me falls in the latter category. But so what? Is consistency of speech fluency really that important in the grand scheme of things?
Hey Paul! Thank you for taking the time in responding. You’re right; in the grand scheme of life, we really need to reflect on what’s important and be grateful for what we have. Fluency is not everything, and I’m so happy you’ve come to accept your true self!
(My previous comment was accidentally sent before I was finished.)
To continue:
I began to realize that consistency of fluency is not at all essential to life happiness or life satisfaction. And – surprisingly to me – I discovered I had much more self-happiness when I peacefully and calmly accepted myself as I am, a person who happens to stutter.
In the past, I mistakenly thought that life happiness would be tied in with fluency.
But no, in my new realization, I discovered that self-acceptance is the key to self-satisfaction. I was much happier in life once I realized I did not have to push myself to become someone other than myself. I could just accept me as I have been, am, and will be. I’m not the most fluent person in the world, but who cares?
I am happy now just being me!
As a man who’ll be seventy next year it’s much easier answering this question today rather than 50 years ago.
At seventy you care not a jot what people think about your irregular speech, just like you don’t care that they’ve lost their hair, their teeth and possibly their prostate 😎
In fact, if you could go back in time and advise your teenage self that you were worrying about all the wrong things (not just your stutter) then that would be pretty cool.
I was in my thirties and still very self conscious about my speech when I went on a two week speech course in London. The course was run by a blind guy – if we think our dysfluent speech is a handicap just imagine how hard life is if you’ve been blind from birth – and he showed us that our stutter was only as self limiting as we allowed it to be. I left that course a changed person. They taught us how to improve our fluency and that initially made a difference but it was the realisation that we were our own worse enemy – putting ourselves down, hiding away from challenging situations, avoidance – that changed my perception of myself and the outside world.
For example, I hated using the phone. Answering it was okay because the person calling you initiated the call and probably knew you stuttered. Making cold calls eg business, booking reservations etc sent me into a cold sweat. I’d block on the first word and invariably the person I was calling would hang up. That just made it worse.
After the London course I challenged myself to make phone calls and still make them to this day even though I may block on the opening words.
This is a long winded reply but suffice to say it’s not until we accept our stutter is an integral part of who we are that we can move forward…