The British Stammering Association has published an article to help people understand what it’s like to have a stammer.

“How would Beverley Vincent describe to a fluent person her world as someone with a covert stammer?

“Ok, so this is me Beverley, a covert stammerer of 41 years! Many fluent people can only imagine what it would be like to have a stammer, they think by ‘slowing down’ ‘taking your time’ and ‘just relaxing’ it will just go away. Well folks, it doesn’t it’s still there lingering inside your head ready to trip you up at the most inopportune moment! Those important times when you really have to have your say, when swapping a word around just isn’t going to cut it! As a fluent person there are so many things you need to know about me to fully understand just how I tick.

My mornings start like any other but some days my chest feels like I’m being sat on, the anxiety this causes knowing that today will be a bad day is horrible. Tight shoulders, furrowed brow, tension in my neck, chest, face and any other part of my body that feels like joining in. Onwards and upwards though, keep strong Bev.

Work! Trying to hide the fact that I stammer from these people is so tiring, changing words, putting in extra words, pretending to forget what I have to say, hiding the twitch in my eye, covering my mouth, going all around the houses just make your very simple point so your dark secret isn’t discovered. Then it happens, just when you least expect it, oh no who noticed? Did I manage to disguise it by pretending to get tongue tied?

The Meeting! Who will be there that doesn’t know I stammer? Will they think I don’t know what I’m talking about because I don’t say what I really want to say? I have so much to offer this conversation and so many questions to ask but hopefully somebody else will ask them. Anyway I can always email them later and say that I thought of the question after the meeting, at least that way I can get my point across without feeling foolish and embarrassed. Let’s just hope they don’t go around the table and ask you to introduce yourself! If they do, try to go first, start with “Right, ok then, well I’m ……” at least then you can have a run up to it!

The Phone! I have to make calls, I have to receive calls, some are better than others. But it’s so much harder to disguise it. So many people have said “Have you been running?” when I answer the phone and I’ll say yes, even though I haven’t moved for the last hour, at least then you don’t have to say “no I was just gasping for breath after forcing Good Morning out!” And then we have the angry customer! Oh no confrontation…… what to do, your heart immediately begins pounding, you might as well just give up now!

The Tears! There have been so many occasions in my life when I have cried and not been able to say what I really wanted to say. My friend’s father died recently, a very good friend who I respected very much. When I gave his wife a cuddle at the funeral I really wanted to say “He was a lovely man, we will all really miss him, you had many good years together and in time you will look back on so many fond memories. It went on…. What I actually said was “the service was nice” I came away feeling so disappointed because all the words I wanted to say other people were saying.

My perception of other people! Why does it matter to me so much what other people think? Do people think negatively of me because I can’t say things the way they can? Why do I feel that people feel sorry for me? Should people feel sorry for me? Are they embarrassed when the dreaded block rears its ugly head? Why do some people make me feel inferior, I’m just as good as them.

The missed Opportunities! School, that job you really fancy, I always wanted to be in the Police, can you seriously imagine that? The language that you wanted to learn but can’t as you can’t control English never mind another language! The list is too long to go on.

Like the song says ‘Words don’t come easy to me’ I spend so much time swapping words that I really want to say for words that I can say. I constantly scan ahead getting the words ready to change at the last minute.

Those wonderful people who invented texting and email! A big thank you to all those people out there who made a stammerer’s life so much easier, finally we can have our say. We raise a glass to the internet so we can book online to see that film we daren’t ask for, we can order the pizza with the toppings we actually want! But most of all we can contact the people who actually understand what we are going through and the daily dilemmas we face. We can find other people who also face the same issues every day.

My final note for the day is ‘its good to talk’………….. sometimes.

“Interiorising the stammer, developing extensive strategies for maintaining the overt fluency, meant that I’m pretty sure that even my family were largely unaware of the problem that I knew I had. Living with this secret was a nightmare. The constant hiding and fear of being found out caused many problems.

It has always been predominantly an internal struggle, a struggle of will, of developing an ever changing array of tactics, ‘tricks’ by which overt stammering could be avoided.”

The British Stammering Association has put together a leaflet which highlights the features of ‘Interiorised Stammering’

• high levels of fluency
• high levels of avoidance
• strong negative feelings about stammering

Do you

• habitually conceal the fact that you stammer?
• live with fear and panic that people will find out you stammer?
• have very few, if any people in your life who know you stammer?
• struggle with feelings of secrecy and shame about your stammer?

Do you

• exhaust yourself by searching ahead in your mind for potentially difficult sounds?
• extensively substitute feared words for others which are easier?
• internally rehearse speech over and over?
• block silently on starting to speak?

If you can identify with a number of these characteristics and your speech is very fluent a lot of the time then read on.

Some people’s stammering is more on the inside: ‘covert’ than on the outside: ‘overt’

Examples of interiorised stammering

• You may habitually hesitate before you say your name
• You may hold back from ordering drinks at the bar, or decide to suddenly change your mind at the last minute to order something you can pronounce more easily

Stammering is like an iceberg…

Joseph Sheehan, an eminent speech and language therapist from the USA, who stammered himself, has described some people’s stammering to be like an iceberg:

“The part above the surface, what people see and hear, is really the smaller part. By far the larger part is the part underneath, the shame, the fear, the guilt, all those other feelings that we have when we try and speak a simple sentence and can’t. Like me you have probably tried to keep as much of that iceberg under the surface as possible….”

Some people’s stammering is more underneath the iceberg so that others may not be aware you stammer at all.

What you can do

Because interiorised stammering is more or less successfully hidden from others it can be hard for others to know or understand how you are feeling on the inside. When you tell people about your stammer they may say e.g. “Oh don’t worry about it, I would never have known!” This may imply to you that you don’t really have a problem at all and may make you feel you are just making a fuss. In extreme cases you may have been so ‘successful’ in your hiding that in fact you are not believed for having a stammer at all. This can feel hurtful and frustrating. Of course, an important part of you is not being seen.

Because your stammer is more hidden it is not less of a problem but a different sort of problem.

There is help available for you. There are people who understand exactly what you are feeling.

“Pretending you don’t have a stammer stands in the way of personal development; you cannot get help for something you don’t outwardly admit to. I am 37 yrs and have only now decided that I need to stop this charade and get help for my stammer. By not being honest and getting help earlier, what opportunities have been lost by interiorising?”

Speech and language therapists are well aware how strong the feelings associated with interiorised stammering can be and how these can affect the choices you make in your life. It is possible to make real changes by facing these fearful feelings and therapy can be liberating.

“Before therapy, there were considerable costs of hiding my stammering. I wasted huge amounts of energy and mental resources concentrating on ‘how I said’ things, rather than ‘what I said’. This impacted on the quality of my communication. My emotional communication was also compromised. While I kept my smile going, habitually suppressing all my negative feelings (internally the world was collapsing around me), my emotional health and sense of well-being was badly affected.”

“Therapy helped me see that the habit of hiding the stammer, not the stammer itself, has been the biggest problem in my life. It’s such a freedom to feel it no longer matters to the same extent whether I happen to stammer from time to time. It no longer feels like the end of the world!”

For more information go to The British Stammering Association.
They have a leaflet available to download here

Written by Rachel Harrison, speech and language therapist, on behalf of Integrated Treatment Services.