My stutter is driving me insane. Having normal conversations with people that made 100000 times harder and more awkward. It’s embarrassing as hell and I’m sick of it.
Conversations with most people I have daily are difficult because it’s hard to keep people listening for that long and it’s very awkward to talk to someone the first time as they expect me to have a stutter. It’s so isolating. Ever since I was a kid everyone just to make fun of me for it. I wish I could talk like everyone else.
I’ve lost so many opportunities to my stutter just think about it. I’ll never a telemarketer, (not really a lost) I’ll never be a voice actor, and how many other jobs require you to speak to others?
I can empathize.
Had a friend back in school that stuttered. It was stressful as hell just watching him deal with it, so I can imagine how much stress it would feel like, even if he hadn’t expressed much the same things you have.
He ended up finding some stress relief via singing, and only hanging around people that didn’t put pressure on him.
Cool dude; haven’t seen him in years though. He left the state for college (wrestling scholarship), and doesn’t come back except to visit family, so we rarely have time to catch up.
He ended up doing technical writing, like for instructions and textbooks and the like. Freelance now, or was.
I’ve noticed for some people it’s goes away with age.
Oh man. I feel this so much.
I lost all my teeth at the end of summer and I now speak with a pronounced lisp. I sound either removed or flamboyantly gay - neither of which I have a problem with, but they’re not me.
Ah well. It is what it is.
Edit: may in fact be removed. 1/2 ain’t that bad.
I remember having a stutter at around age 5-7. I even still remember what it felt like when words got stuck. To me it felt like a kind of stress response. Once the stutter started it was kind of a self-reinforcing reflex. Don’t remember exactly how I got over it, but I think I started preparing how I would say things and pre-vocalize, and once I had gotten the first few words out smoothly it went easier from there. After a while it stopped entirely.
You might find some encouragement from the story of King George VI, who spoke with a stutter. If you haven’t seen the movie The King’s Speech, I highly recommend it.
Winston Churchill also had a speech impediment, and yet is remembered for his speeches to parliament.
I recognize that these were people of privilege and you probably aren’t, so that makes things even more difficult. But I do believe that everyone can be useful and a blessing to those around them, even while dealing with a stutter.
I believe Biden also had a stutter when younger.
James Earl Jones had a stutter during his childhood, and look where he ended up in his life. One of the things I commonly see is that talking and singing use different parts of the brain, so while you may have trouble with a stutter while talking, you may not while singing. That may be something worth looking into.
Anecdotal confirmation that singing did wonders for some stuttering folk I met in my life.
I can easily empathize, it must be exhausting to be the owner of a stuttering voice. Your experience with it and the emotions that followed are pretty much what I would expect any person that is hindered by their stutter to feel after a while. It’s not easy
It is easy to be embarrassed by it, though gh, but it’s probably in your best interest to just frigging own it. For the time being, you will have to work with/around/through it, so, if you can muster the strenght, you could just as well own the stutter with pride. You might not like it, but it IS you currently. Not being embarrassed might make convo’s slightly less intense.
Good luck coping with it all. Love from the internet!
I think speech therapy has strategies for dealing with stuttering.
I know, I would like to go one day.
Music therapy helped my son a bunch (in line with the other singing recommendations).
I am not a speech therapist, but I bet a lot of it comes down to practicing techniques. Have you ever looked on YouTube to see if there are any free speech therapy videos to give you a head start?
Yeah, there are some. I know about this one guy who’s a comedian (idk what his name is) who had a stutter but found out when he did an impression of somebody it would go away so been doing that. I’ve noticed it’s less common. I heard whistling helps.
