Understanding the Person Behind the Stutter
I’m an SLP graduate student, and I just want to say how much I appreciate everyone being willing to share their experiences and be honest about their perspectives. As someone who hopes to work with those who stutter, I know there’s only so much I can learn from a textbook, and hearing directly from people with lived experience is something I really value. I want to make sure that, as a future SLP, I’m not just focusing on what I hear when someone speaks, but also understanding their experiences beyond that.
My question is:
What is something about stuttering that you wish more people understood, even those who think they already understand it?
Hi, Ashley, and thank you for this important question!
Stuttering tends to baffle people, for a number of reasons:
First of all, it tends to be very inconsistent – a person can have fluency or near-fluency at times, and much difficulty at other times. And often, it can greatly vary within a particular situation, or across multiple situations that are all very similar. If a situation appears to give much difficulty, the same type of situation might have more fluent speech on another day. A situation that usually does not result in much difficulty could unexpectedly result in speech problems on a particular day, for no apparent reason.
Also this inconsistency tends to result in a common myth that stuttering is mostly psychologically-based, and that it all may depend on how nervous or anxious a person who stutters might happen to feel at that moment.
I wish it was more known that stuttering is primarily neurologically-based, stemming from a neurological predisposition to stutter (often, but not always, with genetic roots). In the last 35 years, we have learned a great deal about the neurophysiological process of stuttering – from brain scan research (since c. 1990), and from extensive genetic studies.
The inconsistency is based on the interaction of the neurophysiological factors with psychological/emotional factors – as neural signals, the result of the neurological predisposition, are sent to the speech mechanism to tighten the speech muscles, in response to perceived stress beyond a certain threshold.
(Besides being a person who severely stutters, I also have a graduate/professional education in speech-language pathology. Can you tell?)
Anyways, I’m not on the professional panel, so I won’t give more technical details.
But still, I would like people to know: 1) Stuttering is primarily a neurological condition (and for many, genetic). 2) Psychological factors can interact with this neurology, so the levels of stuttering can very much vary, depending on a particular situation. 3) Stuttering can vary from day to day (also a result of the interaction with psychological factors), for reasons that may not be clear. 4) There exists at this time no generalized scientific-based “cure” for stuttering.
If people understood this, it would go a long way to demystify the disorder for others. And this would help people who stutter feel more accepted by society, and perhaps reduce the amount of discrimination against people who stutter that unfortunately still exists.
I hope this has been helpful, and I wish you the best of luck in your future career!
– Paul