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Why some people suffer from a stutter

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Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#41

Post by kuratkull »

bitbuilder wrote: post #30
kuratkull wrote: post #19

I am in my early 30s and I have had a stutter since childhood. It was pretty serious when I was younger, currently pretty manageable - many/most people I know don't know(or remember) that I stutter. As I get older it's become more of an internal battle. I am pretty good at hiding it. If I am relaxed I can talk for long stretches without pauses. But occasionally I have to take a second or two before I can get a word o…

Thanks for sharing. You've described my own stutter and struggles perfectly. Like you, I can tell I'm going to "block" on a word before I even say it. So it's less of what's thought of as a conventional stutter and more just a complete inability to say the word. It's a strange, almost scary, feeling to those who experience it. However, if I'm particularly excited about something, or don't care about the opinions of c…

Yeah, my go-to solution is just to replace the word with something else... usually something correct, but strange. Exactly like your dog-pet example. I am also drinking large amounts of coffee daily - maybe that's what's kept it at bay all along ;)

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#42

Post by biophysboy »

2wrist wrote: post #34

Have a stutter too, I was in speech therapy from when I was 7, and one of the techniques that worked best was to focus on breathing and relaxation. When I blocked on words, the levels of tension in my body was/is extremely high. Specifically in my diaphragm, when there is tension, my chest is more rigid and the tension in mouth and tongue is so much stronger. So they had me focusing on relaxing my diaphragm which wou…

Something I've always been curious about: does the physiological stress or the psychological stress come first? Do you think "I'm stuttering" first, or does that tension you experience precede it?

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#43

Post by lymeeducator »

aluket wrote: post #20
lymeeducator wrote: post #17

My young son, now 7 (no stutter), did stutter at age 4 and had some level of anxiety. My wife and I discovered that he has an allergy to annatto, a natural seed used for orange dye & nutty flavor, that triggered the stuttering. The stuttering was likely due to slight inflammation in his brain. In this case, slice of organic American (orange) cheese caused him to stutter within 10 minutes. Then we could tell when he h…

> I have an idea, but it's pretty hard to test I'd be intrigued to hear more about your theory

Neuroquant imaging filters for MRI are supposed to detect changes like this, but are quite expensive and not readily available. The pediatricians shrugged their shoulders. Functional medicine doctors would be more willing to pursue this approach (they like data). The trick is finding the root cause of the swelling, which is usually an immune response to a protein it does not like and wants to isolate. I am unaware of other locations in my son's body that become inflamed by Annatto, his stutter was/is the first notable symptom.

Is it the Annatto itself that collected in my son's brain/frontal lobe and triggered inflammation? A brain scan at that time would probably help shed light.

Was something else there that Annatto reacted with/killed and my son's system inflamed due to the residual proteins (it's used as an anti-parasitic in native cultures - and yes, herbs can cause a die off as most lyme+ patients have demonstrated repeatedly - and I will get forehead pressure from a die-off, my son might be similar in that regard)?

In short, there's not enough data or an easy way to gather it.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#44

Post by adjkant »

I had a stutter as a young kid, went to speech therapy, the usual story here it seems. While some breathing and relaxation helped, mentally I always had a distinct picture of why the stutter was there.

For me, it was always the simple appearance that my mind was thinking far faster than I could talk, and that would get in the way the farther I thought ahead and could no longer "multitask" on the two "threads" coherently, forcing a bit of a reset. As I got older, I lost my stutter mostly but I speak quite fast. To the point that many of my friends have to get used to my speech when the see me for the first time in a while. I have to consciously tone down the speed for some public speaking events (which I generally handle well otherwise). This is something I honed mostly over middle/high school. In some ways, I solved this whole issue in reverse - speeding up my speech rather than slowing my thoughts, though of course there was a bit of meeting in the middle.

I wonder if this section might be relevant to my case:

> During the 1990s, Maguire and colleagues were among the first to use a certain kind of brain scan, positron emission tomography, on people who stutter. They found too much dopamine activity in these people’s brains. That extra dopamine seems to stifle the activity of some of the brain regions that Chang and others have linked to stuttering.

If excess dopamine actually speeds up thought, that could more or less match what I experience. I have no idea if it would be experienced that way or not though.

I'd note that I would never seek treatment for this now with the stutter mostly gone. I consider my brain speed / speech speed a bit of a superpower or advantage in many ways and mitigating that as needed for specific scenarios is far more preferable to me than slowing down my brain to be limited to my "brain multitasking" speed limit.

Based on reading other posts here, it seems like fast thoughts tie back to a lot of people. I was lucky enough not to experience the nervous/anxiety part of it. I'm now wondering if that's an entirely separate experience, or simply an addition the mind can add on as one experiences stuttering.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#45

Post by jokull »

anuragsoni wrote: post #26

My stutter has been my primary source of stress/anxiety for that last 12 years. Its impacted my time in college and then later at Grad School. I've had good days and bad (more good days lately), but i'll never forget the terror I used to feel whenever I had to present something in front of other people. I skipped classes to avoid doing that, i bombed many a presentation because I had trouble with certain sentences an…

Wow, you are describing by exact experience. Except I did get over social anxiety eventually, mostly.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#46

Post by jokull »

biophysboy wrote: post #42
2wrist wrote: post #34

Have a stutter too, I was in speech therapy from when I was 7, and one of the techniques that worked best was to focus on breathing and relaxation. When I blocked on words, the levels of tension in my body was/is extremely high. Specifically in my diaphragm, when there is tension, my chest is more rigid and the tension in mouth and tongue is so much stronger. So they had me focusing on relaxing my diaphragm which wou…

Something I've always been curious about: does the physiological stress or the psychological stress come first? Do you think "I'm stuttering" first, or does that tension you experience precede it?

Good question. For me it's just a mixed bundle and self fulfilling. I can map out the stuttering words and sounds and I jam up when I realize I can't replace the word elegantly. My stutters are now so far between that people are thrown back when it appears suddenly.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#47

Post by castlecrasher2 »

Scarblac wrote: post #16
matthewheath wrote: post #5

I have a stutter. I went to a speech and language therapist, which helped a little bit. For the longest time I couldn't say words like "Wednesday" (stuttering on the W) or even simple phrases like "Yes sir/ma'am" when at secondary school (I believe this is known as a "block", my mouth just wouldn't work; I froze up). I'm not entirely sure what helped me overcome the problem. If I'm relaxed, my speech is fluent. If I…

I had therapy for years as well, didn't help. Until one day. They had taught us a very artificial way to speak, a sort of very slow, very loose su-su-stuttering on purpose. 15-year old me hated it. Then they made us go into stores, and ask for things using this technique. A couple of AA batteries, in my case, using that technique. I dreaded this, thought it was completely ridiculous. But the guy behind the counter di…

I love this story, thanks for sharing it. It's interesting how frequent behaviors can be changed by seemingly unrelated things, like this tactic.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#50

Post by 2wrist »

biophysboy wrote: post #42
2wrist wrote: post #34

Have a stutter too, I was in speech therapy from when I was 7, and one of the techniques that worked best was to focus on breathing and relaxation. When I blocked on words, the levels of tension in my body was/is extremely high. Specifically in my diaphragm, when there is tension, my chest is more rigid and the tension in mouth and tongue is so much stronger. So they had me focusing on relaxing my diaphragm which wou…

Something I've always been curious about: does the physiological stress or the psychological stress come first? Do you think "I'm stuttering" first, or does that tension you experience precede it?

Thinking about it, they both feed each other, if you start with on you will get the other.
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