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Why some people suffer from a stutter

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Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#101

Post by msla »

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…

I was in speech therapy from a young age, too, and breathing helped, but I had to go a bit further than just focusing on breath control. What really flipped the switch for me, after I had breath control down, was elongating the initial sounds of words when I felt a bit unsteady in my speech. This gets a bit complicated for stop consonants, like b or d; luckily, drawing out the sound made when everything is "in position" helps. For b this is m, and for d it's n.

Anyway, it's a "resetting" technique, forcing me to coordinate everything by holding things steady for a bare fraction of a second when they threaten to fall out of sync and cause a cascading failure. It wouldn't work without breathing, but breathing alone didn't quite do it for me.

(Interestingly, relaxing wasn't quite a necessity: I never stuttered when I yelled in anger.)

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#102

Post by msla »

HappySweeney wrote: post #21

I got rid of my childhood stutter near instantly when someone told me that it was becuase I was thinking three sentences ahead of where my mouth was. All I needed to do was slow down the "speech in your head". I could still think ahead; I just needed to not internally vocalize my future words, and it all went away like magic.

This, plus trying to speak on empty lungs, was my problem when I was young.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#103

Post by Lvl999Noob »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #65
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…

It’s ironic you stutter on A because I stutter on D and M, my initials, probably more than any other sounds. Stuttering is such a head game that I think it must be that you end up stuttering more on sounds that are more important to you. For example: I worked in finance a while and started stuttering on the word “million” more than I ever did before! Then I stopped working in finance and that basically went away. Sti…

Interesting. I stutter on K which is what my name starts with.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#104

Post by Lvl999Noob »

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…

This is my exact experience. I am in college right now and I avoid taking courses that have a presentation component. My stutter really comes up if people are paying attention to me. Many a times, I have ended up saying I don't know the answer when I did know but just could not say it and did not want to waste everyone's time.

I took speech therapy classes once, but unfortunately did not complete them. My stutter is still there but I can now at least reduce it a lot.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#105

Post by rdtsc »

pbhowmic wrote: post #38

My son (10) stutters. We thought we had gotten him help early enough so the problem would be "licked" just as so many others before him had done so but it helped some but the stuttering is still there. I don't know what else we could have done but this failure to help him cure his stuttering is one that left me feeling guilty and also angry (at no one in particular, just indiscriminate anger) and this spilled over in…

I stutter too. It's was hard for both me and my parents. I know they always felt guilty, but it wasn't clear what they could have done differently. We tried therapy, and I think it was early enough too and it didn't make much of a difference initially. Please don't feel guilty. Thinking back, I think my stuttering got a bit better when my parents stopped correcting, or paying attention to it as much (at the advice of a therapist, I found out later).

Kids have a very good knack for picking the emotional state of their parents. They may not be able to articulate their feelings, but they can tell if the parent feels guilty, sad, angry, anxious. At least for me anxiety made it a bit worse. Try to find friends and family members who would be accepting and understand and maybe that would help some.

Forgive me if I sounded preachy or too direct, everyone is different of course, hope some of the advice helped. I wish you and your son all the best.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#106

Post by rdtsc »

wirthjason wrote: post #86

What’s the super power stutterers have to compensate? Usually when there’s a deficiency in one area other area step up and become stronger. Obviously it doesn’t have to be the case but I was hoping the article would mentions something about it. I ask as a stutterer. :) I open my mouth and sometimes the words just don’t come out. I can relax and think about what I want to say and it gets better. Or I choose a differen…

I speak multiple languages, as I found out I didn't stutter as much in some languages as I do in others. Granted, that's not why I learned them but it's just one of the side effects that it made learning them more enjoyable. "Hey, look I don't stutter in French, how about that... Let's speak some French then!".

Also, know lots of synonyms, just to avoid saying the dreaded stuttering words that I feel are coming up I substitute them at the last minute. Sometimes it works better than other times. You probably know exactly how that is :-)

A thick skin perhaps from all the bullying I had received. At least I'd like to think so. But, I do believe I am a bit more resilient and persistent because of it.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#107

Post by Spare_account »

lymeeducator wrote: post #43
aluket wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Not entirely relevant so I apologise but your situation reminded me of the "inflamation theory of disesase":

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3492709/

"Inflammation has long been a well-known symptom of many infectious diseases, but molecular and epidemiological research increasingly suggests that it is also intimately linked with a broad range of non-infectious diseases, perhaps even all of them"

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#108

Post by warent »

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…

You may already be familiar but you might be interested in checking out the comedian Drew Lynch https://www.youtube.com/user/WordsRHard

He developed his stutter years ago after a softball accident (hit him in the throat). He ended up getting into standup comedy and is becoming pretty big.

All this is to say that the "impediment" actually adds character to him and makes him a lot more interesting and memorable in good ways. Maybe you can reframe your stutter in this positive way as well.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#109

Post by justanacccount »

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #97
gao8a wrote: post #96

I still stutter once in a while, much worse as a kid, heres what helped me: 1) Public speaking, I finished up to the old ACS level at a local toastmasters 2) Subconsciously building a wordlist that I stutter more than others, and using synonyms that don't 3) Playfully smiling and saying "Bleh!" out loud if I do catch myself stuttering, and repeating what I was trying to say. Finally: To the well intentioned non-stutt…

Hey man, hope you don't mind me asking, but what's the problem with telling someone who stutters to slow down? Background: my son is diagnosed with TA, and he has a peculiar speech pattern, not sure if it's a kind of stutter. In my interpretation, he struggles to find the right word, and he goes back to correct the sentences he's speaking. The only advice that I can give him is to slow down and collect his thoughts,…

It's like telling a person having a seizure, just relax man. Or a person with Tourette's syndrome: "try not to say that word man, it doesn't make sense". Normal people stutter when they're anxious or hyped up. But that doesn't mean that stutterers are always anxious or hyped up.

It's easier for people to arrive to a conclusion (possibly an invalid one) about a man's suffering, than actually admitting they don't know what the cause is and try to solve the problem interactively with that person. e.g. She has lupus, oh it must be because of her weird diet. etc.

In your case, the best thing you can do is listen. Try to ask them questions like: have you noticed any pattern that decreases the frequency of your stutter? how about you try this or that? You also have to be careful and try not to be pushy about it. As a stutterer myself, I came to a point where I just got used to the social awkwardness and starting to accept to generally accept my stutter. It's giving me way less anxiety than it used to do. So, I'd be a bit annoyed if someone whom I don't really know that well try to interactively solve this "problem" with me. Because it's only a problem if it's causing me discomfort.

Also, showing facial signs of petty or discomfort is the worst thing you can do. When you're listening to a stutterer, don't break eye contact, because it shows that you're uncomfortable being in their shoe. treat it as if it's someone saying "ahh" "emm" a lot, most people filter out these noises unconsciously, try to do that. I understand it's a lot to ask.

Imo, the absolute worst thing you can do, is to talk to them a lot about it while conveying that it's a "problem" that needs to be solved and always trying to find a cure. My dad used to be very pushy about it and it caused me some serious psychological harm, because I never felt that I'm good enough, and I'd argue that it caused me to stutter even more, because he always wanted me to be perfect. Instead of discussing their weakness, try to talk to them about how they can leverage their strengths to be the best version of themselves.

Hope that helps, feel free to message me if you have questions.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#110

Post by gerdesj »

dshpala wrote: post #22

I have a stutter too. What is interesting, is that I stutter less when speaking English than when I'm speaking Russian (my first language). I think party it has something to do with different rhythm structure of English.

I think you have just added a dimension to the graph instead of simply another data point! That sounds like a research grant and a paper to me.
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