February 11 Meeting Update: Openness

The hardest thing for me as a stutterer is how to tell someone else that I stutter. When's a good time to say it? What words to use? Ones that I know I'll probably stutter on, to show what stuttering is like? Or ones that I'm confident I can say fluently, to avoid awkwardness? What do I do when I want to "come out" to someone I've known for a long time? How do I make sure that a person I'm meeting for the first time sees me as more than a stutterer? Is it better just to say nothing?

At our last night's meeting, one group member talked about how she deals with this tricky problem, and her strategy struck me as not only very useful but also compelling. Before she even introduces herself, in person, on the phone, or in a public speaking situation, she says this: All my life I've had a speech disability. I hope you can look beyond the imperfections of my speech. If there's something you don't understand, please let me know and I will be glad to explain it. 

It might seem like avoidance not to use the word stutter when you're trying to tell people that you're a stutterer. But the only thing that really matters is to find a way to talk about your stutter that works for you. The particular arrangement of words and sentences isn't as important as the intention behind them: to stop hiding. Few of us have the courage, after years of anxiety about our stutter, to let it all hang out. We need to dip our toe in the water first. We need to peel back our defenses one layer at a time.

These defenses are extremely hard to let go of because they served us when there was nothing else that helped. We shared war stories at our last meeting about all the horrible reactions we got from other people when we stuttered (weird facial expressions, having the phone hung up on you, bullying), and all the tricks we developed to hide our stutter and stop these reactions: pretending to be sick, jumping through hoops to get classes in college where reading aloud isn't required, causing your own nose to bleed, faking laryngitis. It's enough to make you laugh and cry at the same time.

In the end, we want to become open about our stutter not to prevent other people from thinking badly of us, but to prevent ourselves from thinking badly about ourselves. All our group members said that those silly excuses to avoid speaking left bitterness and emotional scars behind. In the long run, it does us far more harm than good to hide. There's no better way to help ourselves than to talk openly about our stutter, no matter how awkward it feels at first. It may even feel impossible. But try to figure out what little part of it is possible for you right now. And go out and try it.