Speaking Freely, Not Fluently
How I learned to own and embrace my disability
This will be one of my more personal blog posts, but hey, I’m running low on topic ideas, and this one’s easy to speak on, so strap in.
Out of Control
I’ve been a person who stutters since I could remember. I usually tell people it started when I was 4 or 5 years old but I don’t know. Sometime around then. There are about 70 million people in the world who “stutter”, but it ranges on the severity scale. Some people have more apparent stutters, and some are what’s called “covert stutterers”. People who can hide it very well. That’s not me. I happen to be higher on the severity side. In high school, my speech was so severe that I used to not finish my sentences. I’d give up because I couldn’t deal with the embarrassment of these long, painful blocks that would last minutes. This shaped how I lived my life.
In elementary and high school, I had a long period where I was in denial of my stutter. I didn’t want to believe I had it, and I didn’t want to believe how much it affected my daily life. So I hid. I stopped speaking, or I would only speak in short bursts. I never participated in class or raised my hand. I never went out of my way to meet new people or talk to girls. I thought at some point it would just go away. And of course, it never did.
Even after years and thousands of dollars spent on speech therapy (thanks to my incredibly supportive parents), I still couldn’t control my speech. It was improving, but it was still very situational. I could get my point across with friends, with family (still with quite a bit of struggle), but when meeting new people and speaking in public, it was as worse as ever. I had professors in my undergrad tell me to breathe mid-presentation. I had teachers pity me by adding time to time-constrained presentations. The list goes on and on.
In Control (kinda)
In college, I started to come into myself. Once I had a couple of internships and meet more people, I realized my speech was getting the way of the things that I was to do. And that infuriated me. But it also fueled me. I started to take note of things that would make my speech better or worse. What actions, what drugs, what interactions, etc. And after a while, I learned that the biggest things that improved my speech, was speaking. Simple things like going to order a pizza slice in person. Making a point to talk on the phone, even though it absolutely terrified me. Putting myself out there in any way that I could. The opposite of hiding from it. I learned this during my last year of my undergrad and knew I was onto something big.
Once I started working in the industry it was still pretty rough, but it was better. I started to say what I want when I wanted a little more, but I was still not OK with where my speech was at. I struggled to speak on the phone with clients, even when I knew exactly what they needed. I was so tired of this. I wanted full control.
The biggest step in my journey was when I attended my first National Stuttering Association conference in Dallas in 2017. An event that would change my life. It taught me about advertising my stutter, voluntarily stuttering and, most importantly, accepting your stutter. All of these concepts have to do with exposing your stutter, rather than hiding from it. This is was an idea that blew my mind. I wanted to share these with the rest of the stuttering world so they could benefit from them the way I had. So I came back to LA and became a local NSA chapter leader at Cal State Northridge, hoping to spread the word of support and acceptance. Another example of my newfound desire to get out of my comfort zone to improve my speech.
Another thing that I learned in Dallas was about a new form of therapy called Avoidance Reduction Therapy. This builds even more off facing your speech head-on rather than hiding from it. It addresses the emotional side of stuttering (tackling fear and anxiety) rather than the physical side (trying to make you 100% fluent). It taught how to reduce secondary behaviors like maintaining eye contact and other ticks (I touch my eye during blocks) and taught you to advertise your stutter, looking people in the eye, and reduce filler words. This was the opposite of speech therapy that I used to do when I was a kid, which the end goal was complete fluency. And if you stuttered, you failed. This new therapy was perfect for me, as it was offered at CSUN and for the first time, I was paying for it myself. This made for greater motivation to practice it myself and really make the best use out of the program. This was another massive step in my speech journey. I still work constantly but it seems to become more natural and easy every day.
My speech was really improving at this point. For the first time in my life, I was feeling comfortable and confident in the majority of my speaking situations. I really can’t put the feeling into words, and I still have waves of it occasionally, but the world opened up to me. I could do anything. After over 20 years, I was free. I still had “bad speech days” (very common among people who stutter) but I at least was OK with them. I used this newfound freedom to apply to grad school and get out of LA. I was ready for the next big step and all that it would bring.
Now
That brings me to this chapter of my life. The CMCI Master’s program in Boulder, Colorado. When I came into this program I was fairly comfortable and confident in my speech, but I STILL felt I could be more in control. I could get my ideas across but was still struggling to hold onto the wheel in situations like public speaking and meeting new people. But my speech was very, very good (relative to how it used to be) in situations I was comfortable in.
I stumbled upon a Boulder stuttering support group that meets once a week. NSA chapter meetings are only once a month, and so this was a massive discovery. And the Boulder meetings are different. NSA meetings are more like group therapy sessions with everyone just kind of spewing their thoughts on how their speech on been, how they’ve been feeling about it, etc. The Boulder meetings are structured more like practice sessions combined with therapy sessions. You have to say what you’re working on before each exercise which allows you to actively think about the “techniques” you’re using while you speak.
The two biggest steps I’ve taken to control my speech after coming to Boulder are voluntary stuttering and joining Toastmasters. Voluntary stuttering is a technique where PWS (person who stutters) repeats a sound or blocks on purpose, usually on feared words. This not only helps with the fear and anxiety part of stuttering but also takes the power away from the disability, putting the PWS back in control. As a PWS friend of mine said, there are three ways to speak: in-control, out of control, or fluency. One of those is impossible, and another one fucking sucks, so in-control is the best option. It’s because of this that I’ve picked up voluntary stuttering, further allowing me to own my speech and gain control of it. It took me quite a while to get used to, as I was taught basically my whole life that stuttering was a bad thing that I should hide it all costs, but after much practice, I’ve been getting a hang of it. And this was the final piece of the puzzle I needed.
I’m proud to say this is the most fluent, and more importantly, the most consistent that my speech has ever been. I finally have control over it and I’ve never felt better about it. I can speak my mind when I want to, and with very little struggle. I speak up during class, have long conversations with friends, family, and colleagues, and I don’t have to wake up in the morning wondering if my speech will be bad or good that day. I still have to pinch myself sometimes to believe how far I’ve come.
It’s taken over 20 years, but I can say with confidence that I’m proud to be a person who stutters. It’s made me who I am today, and for that, I am grateful.
