To ask “what is stuttering?” may seem like a simple question. But if you think about it, most people know very little about stuttering. To most people, “stuttering” is repeating words or parts of words. You’ve probably heard people say something like, “Oh, I stutter when I’m nervous or excited.” From that, they decide that you stutter because you are “nervous” or “excited” and so they offer advice like “Just relax” as a means to “help” you with your stuttering.
But there’s more to it than that, right? For example, the behaviors of stuttering can take on many forms. Yes, there are the repetitions of words, parts of words, or phrases. But there are also hesitations (often called “pauses” or “tense pauses” when they occur between words or sentences, and “broken words” when they occur within words), and prolongations of sounds in words. We may have a hard time getting our voice started, resulting in a kind of “grunt” (“hard onset of phonation”) when we start to speak. We may put in unnecessary words (“interjections”) to give ourselves extra time to say a word, or to make it easier to transition into a word. Most people do these things to varying degrees – those of us who stutter typically do them either more often or with more severity than most people. And when we “stutter” we feel a loss of control of our speech – we are unable to move forward with speech during a moment of stuttering. We may also have “normal disfluencies” in our speech – the same as those experienced by other people – and what makes those “normal” is that we don’t feel that loss of control. Of course, on the surface, it is often hard for other people to determine whether we are “stuttering” or being “normally disfluent.” Only we know with certainty when we stutter – it’s our experience.
Because of that, we may have started to do things to “hide” our stuttering from others. (After all, if what we do is more severe or more frequent than what other people do, that makes us different and we’d prefer to be as much like others as possible, right?) Unfortunately, if we try to hide our stuttering it can often make it worse. We may not say exactly what we want to say, but instead substitute words (“circumlocution”). Or we may use interjections to “stall” and hope that the “stutter feeling” goes away. We may simply choose not to talk – we may say “I don’t know” in class even when we do know the answer, or we may avoid situations in which we know we may have to talk. We might not order the food we want when we go to a restaurant, but instead order things that are “easy” to say.
These things are not all true for all teens who stutter, but all of them are true for some teens who stutter and I’m sure that as you are reading this you are identifying the things that are characteristic of you. That’s okay – it means you are not abnormal, you are like other teens who stutter. You’re not alone.
So, although it may seem simple on the surface, stuttering can be a pretty complex problem. And because stuttering is not a simple problem, there are no simple solutions. To get the most help for your stuttering, you need to find someone who understands the multifaceted nature of stuttering and who knows how to address the many aspects of stuttering. Yes, it is likely that you want to be more fluent, but it also would be nice if people understood those other things about stuttering – the hiding, the avoiding – that are often a part of the problem. And there are people out there who do understand those things. You’ve come to the right place. The NSA can help you to find a Speech-Language Pathologist who understands stuttering. The NSA can also help you to meet other teens who stutter. And the NSA can help you learn more about stuttering so that you can educate others about what stuttering really is. Because in spite of what a lot of people think, it’s not so simple after all.
Robert. W. Quesal, PhD
Western Illinois University |
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