Question for PWS
Hi, my name is Kat, and I am currently in graduate school for Speech-Language Pathology. I was wondering, how do you know when you are about to enter a moment of stuttering? Are there any physical feelings or mental feelings?
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Hello! My name is Emily and I am looking to major in speech pathology. I was wondering, how does stuttering affect your daily life? Have you ever been hesitant to go somewhere new or meet new people? Thank you!
I’ll answer Emily first. Back in 1988 on a two week stammering course in London we were sent out into the surrounding streets and told to approach total strangers and ask them for directions. To make it harder they told everyone to make sure they stammered when asking for those directions. We had several covert stammerers in the group and they wanted them to stammer overtly rather than hide their dysfluency.
The covert stammerers found this task very difficult with most saying they felt embarrassed and some even said they felt ashamed.
This part of the course was to help desensitise our long held fear / embarrassment of stammering. There were many more similar tasks as they strived to show us that those fluent folk around us weren’t that bothered about our speech, only we were.
But here’s the interesting thing. One day they had a number of young trainee speech therapists (SLPs) in the room. They wanted us to purposely stammer on every word while speaking out loud. They were trying to reduce our need for avoidance ie changing words mid sentence that you think you might stammer on to those you hoped you won’t stammer on. The therapist leading the course (a blind man called Tom) suddenly asked the trainee therapists to do the same thing. Some couldn’t and some wouldn’t. When asked why they all said they felt embarrassed.
Imagine that, trainee speech therapists too embarrassed to practice stammering in the same room as folk who had stammered all their life.
That’s the power and fear of the overpowering embarrassment many stammerers feel every day and why the City Lit desensitisation course was so important.
Kat, speaking with a stammer / stutter is exhausting. Your breathing is too often wrong, you might forget to breathe, your tongue is in the wrong position, you block on a word and push and push to get it out and it just gets worse or you repeat part of a word for so long your listener thinks you’re having a fit. Your eyes screw up, you might even spit on your listener, your face can contort with a look of pain. This is why we were told on the City Lit course to sit in front of a mirror when making phone calls ie so you could see the physical manifestations that you’ve developed over many years to try and get words out.
So yes, we know when we’re going to stammer. As for the mental feelings they swing from embarrassment to despair to a deep depression in some that can sadly lead to suicidal thoughts. Once again, the importance of desensitisation and showing the young stammerer they are their own worse critic is very important.