24-year-old Charles:
All his life, Charles had been told to hide his stutter. This crazy therapist told him to stop using tricks and openly stutter. Now he says, “I do presentations. I stutter. I have no fear of stuttering.
Nobody is laughing.”
“I started stuttering when I was five or six years old. Some of my first memories of stuttering were when I had difficulty reading out loud in front of the class. I started therapy when I was eight. Mom is also a speech therapist but doesn’t work with people who stutter. She reached out to one of her old professors and they did an evaluation. My speech rate was very high, so I went to speech therapy to speak slower. It kind of helped a bit – I don’t have a lot of good or bad memories.
At this point, if I spoke slower I would stutter less. After a while it didn’t work so I did more of a fluency shaping therapy, one-on-one, where I would get more relaxed, practice easy onsets, those types of things. The goal was for me to speak fluently. I remember going through tests and they would count the words and decide what percent of the time I stuttered. The therapy helped at first, then after a few months out of therapy something would come up and I would start to stutter again. This was middle school through high school.
In lower-feared situations with parents or good friends, stuttering wasn’t a big problem. Outside of that I was still trying to hide it at all costs. When I was in big crowds or meeting new people or had to do a presentation I would use a lot of tricks, switching words around, and pauses. It was a very frustrating experience because I could be fluent. I wouldn’t know why or when or how but I would start stuttering more and it was getting worse over time. I didn’t know much about stuttering causes, and I thought it would go away with time. There’s not a lot of education around the whole topic except for fluency-shaping. ‘Don’t stutter!’ Those were my messages as a kid growing up.
Definitely in terms of school, I remember my grades were pretty good, but teachers’ comments were that I was quiet in class and didn’t participate as much. I was taking a hit in the classes where participating counted. I wasn’t going to tell my teacher, ‘Oh by the way, I stutter.’ I never thought to do this. I definitely did not participate as much in the classroom setting. It would have been nice if I could have felt more comfortable participating. There were many times when I knew the answer, but I didn’t want to speak up, so it affected my grades.
I was a group leader in Boy Scouts so in a way it didn’t hold me back too much outside of the classroom. I played soccer and was the captain my senior year. I played ultimate frisbee and was the captain and did a lot of talking there but in the classroom it was hard. One of the benefits of these activities was that I was put into situations where there was a little more pressure and it pushed me to interact with a lot of other people. I don’t know that it had a massive positive or negative impact on my stutter – but the quality of life? Yes! It definitely improved my quality of life because I loved playing sports in high school and college and going camping and hikes and other fun activities.
The turning point:
I was first introduced to Vivian Sisskin and Avoidance Reduction Therapy (ART) in college. I thought the speech therapist was crazy. All my life I had been told I had to hide my stutter and it’s taboo. Her entire therapy was about not using tricks and openly stuttering to advertise to other people. It’s been six years and I’m very glad I found this therapy. It changed my life. I’m doing things that I never thought I would have done. I’m in medical school now. When I did my medical school applications, I included a paragraph about stuttering because it’s a part of who I am. Then I went back and wrote the whole letter about stuttering after being advised by a friend’s mom who is a writer.
I do presentations. I stutter. I have no fear of stuttering. Nobody is laughing. I would have liked to have done ART early on in life. It would have made my life a lot easier in terms of my speech and communication.
Whatever type of therapy you engage in, there needs to be more emphasis on ‘it’s okay to stutter.’ Even though my mom’s a speech therapist and my parents were very supportive, no one ever told me it’s okay to stutter. That’s one message I wish I had heard growing up.”