OCTOBER 22 is International Stuttering Awareness Day, and according to the Stuttering Foundation, a non-profit organisation (NPO) that helps those who stutter, the day is observed with the intention to raise public awareness of stuttering, which affects 1% of the world’s population.
Stuttering is a speech disorder characterised by the repetition of sounds, syllables or words, the prolongation of sounds and the interruptions in speech known as blocks.
I suffered from the condition in my childhood and improved in my preteen years, and this is how my journey has been thus far.
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I remember dreading speaking during my childhood years. This feeling was usually after a terrifying sensation in my body with my heart almost falling to my stomach. These feelings led to me stuttering.
I grew up a shy and conservative child – if the two traits are ever separable, I was hardly in trouble and always did as I was told. In school, I had more merits than demerits. Need I not mention that in my final year of primary school, I was awarded the ‘Courtesy and Good Behaviour’ Award, and it came with a certificate and a book. Like every other child, I had my flaws, but they were condemned and came with a lot of rejection.
I hope I’ve painted the picture clearly enough about my character as a child when I suffered the most from stuttering. It’s only now in my adult years, after a few years of emotional work, that I am able to relay what was going on inside of me when I stuttered as a child.
I was open to people I’m familiar with, like my immediate family – mostly my siblings and a group of friends in school. However, when I spoke to people I was not used to, I remember feeling so fearful to speak. All these thoughts would rush around in my head that I‘d be focused on anything but what I was saying – from hoping not to mess up what I was trying to say, to wondering if the person I was talking to even understood me to begin with. Somehow, that energy would catch up with my tongue, and the full words would not come out in my speech. I knew exactly what to say in most cases, but the words would get stuck in my mouth, resulting in me repeating the syllable of the word.
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This was not usually a problem when I spoke to my familiar people in casual settings – I just flowed in my speech. The stuttering would come up mostly in large audiences and when I spoke to authority figures in my life.
I hated oral presentation in my foundation phase which is grades 1 to 3. Surprisingly, I enjoyed reading out loud to my classmates, and I remember getting a certificate for it at some point. In Grade Seven, I really fell in love with the sound of my voice when I read, and by the time I was in Grade Eight, I was challenging myself to do oral presentations. The more oral presentations I did, the more I gained confidence and the more my speech improved.
Today, a lot of people cannot pick up that I stutter – words do get stuck in my mouth sometimes, and I used to cover it by speaking faster. With more improvement, I found it easier to just drop into my body, be in the present moment and slow down when I speak. I have not completely improved because I do, every now and then, feel it come up, but it feels easier to deal with it.
I think it’s also important to note that I did not suffer severely from stuttering and maybe that’s why I could improve without professional help.
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