Thank you Morris Wilburn for sharing your story. You note at the end that “People with chronic developmental stuttering are statistically more likely to develop psychological depression and anxiety disorders. I will say this has implications for the effective treatment of stuttering.” It’s an important perspective that can help both parents and SLPs see the importance of focusing on emotional health and well-being.
From Morris:
“I have stuttered all of my life, and am now 72. I am at the age that I enjoy sharing with younger people what I have learned over the years. Information about the causes and pattern of development of stuttering is scattered across hundreds of documents. I am a layperson, but have tried to pull all that together, and my understanding of it. Take it for whatever it is worth.
If a person began stuttering in early childhood for no identifiable reason (e.g., injury to the brain in an accident), it is very likely he was born with a neurological predisposition to stutter. Brain imagining studies indicate it has to do with brain structure, blood flow with the brain, and how that influences the parts of the brain pertaining to speech. In many cases, this predisposition is genetic in origin; this is why there is a statistical tendency for stuttering to “run in families”.
Approximately 80% of children who stutter will stop doing so for no known reason, usually before adolescence. It seems to me that a reasonable explanation, or a partial one, for this cessation is that the strength of the neurological predisposition is not as strong among them.
If a person is still stuttering by late adolescence, he will very probably continue to do so the remainder of his life. Its severity will probably vary over his lifetime, for a variety of reasons.
Among the 20%, another factor often arises during childhood. That factor is psychological in nature. The act of stuttering causes the person to have experiences (being disrespected, being made to feel different) that affect him emotionally in unpleasant ways. This causes him to fear speaking and possibly stuttering. This fear increases his emotional stress and the physical tension within his body while speaking, which causes his stuttering to worsen. It’s a vicious circle.
The 20% also have a strong tendency to develop negative beliefs and perceptions about themselves, and emotions, because of their stuttering and associated experiences. Those may be low self-confidence, sense of inferiority, shame, etc. These feed the fear of stuttering I described above. The psychological component of stuttering is very much a problem “that feeds itself”.
Above I used the term “fear”. But I don’t think this word fully captures the physiological aspect of this fear (increased heart rate, overall physical tension, etc.).
In my opinion, this fear of stuttering is the core of the psychological component of stuttering.
For the past 20 years or so, articles in professional journals have been discussing the parallels between the symptoms of complex PTSD and stuttering. In my opinion, if there were a mild form of complex PTSD, the psychological component of stuttering is one.
Because this fear is acquired and consequently deeply ingrained during childhood, trying to overcome it in adulthood is very difficult. This gets into theories about how a child’s mind learns to respond to threat, and this is almost “hardwired” into the child.
Regarding the severity of stuttering, and how it varies over time and situation, I believe it is a matter of the strength of the biological predisposition relative to the strength of the fear of stuttering. If your confidence (lack of fear) is greater than the strength of your biological predisposition in a given situation (or whatever), you will probably stutter less.
The “negative beliefs and perceptions about themselves, and emotions” that I mentioned above have a very powerful effect. In many cases, these become as great a problem as stuttering itself.
The emotions “run the gauntlet”: low self-esteem, generalized anger, feelings of generalized helplessness, anxiety while around people, and on and on.
Chronic developmental stuttering affects every aspect of a person’s life. It often drives the person’s decisions as to what type of employment to seek, or career to pursue. It did mine.
I have even heard of men who did not propose marriage to the woman they wanted to marry, because of their fear of stuttering while saying their vows during the wedding ceremony. They may have later had the courage or wisdom to propose, but that opportunity may or may not have still existed then.
The person tends to avoid interacting with people, because he knows that he may need to speak. Because of his stuttering, and having unpleasant experiences because of his stuttering, he tends to develop low self-esteem. These two conditions (avoiding people and low self-esteem) work in combination to strongly affect development of the person’s social skills, and his ability to have normal relationships with other people.
A person who avoids interacting with people will, as a natural consequence, be slow to develop social skills and have normal relationships with other people. In some cases, it does more than slow, it arrests.
A person with low self-esteem is unlikely to allow other people to see “the real him”. In that condition, how can the person have normal relationships with other people? Or what if he has taken on a different persona, as a coping mechanism? He can not. At its worst, low self-esteem can get to the degree of self-loathing. A person who hates himself can not love anyone.
Dealing with stuttering is even more complicated by the fact that the person lives in two different worlds, his personal life and employment/the workplace. I have found that stuttering itself is much more an issue in employment/the workplace than in my personal life.
In my personal life, my friends don’t think any less of me because of my stuttering. Some of them may even find me more interesting because of it.
Employers have a very different perception. I have heard “stuttering makes it hard to get hired, and even harder to get promoted”, and have found that to be true.
In some cases, life can get really rough. I have read at least six medical journal articles saying that people with chronic developmental stuttering are statistically more likely to develop psychological depression, anxiety disorders. As a sidebar comment, I will say this has implications for the effective treatment of stuttering.”