My Speech- Part 2

It has been my goal for a couple of years to do something about my speech. I have had various attempts at speech therapy through the years; the first when I was about nine, the second in high school, and then in a couple of support groups after that.

There I learnt a technique called Smooth Speech, which was a way of changing the way you speak in order to avoid stuttering. You slow right down to a drawl, break a sentence down to small phrases, and blend the words into each other. Hard consonants become slow,soft sounds (so a hard 'p' becomes more of a breathy 'ph' sound). When a stutterer really works at this, and puts in the hard yards, he gradually can use the technique while speaking a lot faster, to the point where any speech problem is barely detectable. Years of work can bring really great results.

But to start out with, using the technique you sound very strange. You sound like you are drunk or something. In reality, you probably sound miles better than when you are stuttering, and could get out many more words in the same amount of time. But it is really a big thing to get over, to decide to just change how you talk. It is like suddenly deciding to walk in a way completely different to how you have walked all your life. To you particularly, it sounds horrible and embarrassing.

So when I was doing this during high school, sure, I would use it at home, and was making a lot of progress. But there was no way I was going to bring it out at school in front of my friends. Because of that, I never really gave it the chance to take hold. I still can call up the technique, and I use it falteringly with my wife. But, I do it pretty haphazardly, and not properly.

It has been a long time since I really tried to do something about it. It is mostly a case of it feeling like such a giant mountain to climb, that I just push it aside and put off beginning. There is no actual cure for stuttering, so to try and conquer it is a continual sort of working at it for the rest of your life.

This brings me to why I am writing about this. I feel like it is time (actually many, many years past the time)to do something, and to commit to doing it for the long term. I am so sick and tired of making my life so much harder than it needs to be. I am sick of not getting the chance to say to people all that I want to say. I am sick of the daily embarrassing, demoralising situations I find myself in. I want to order a coffee without pointing to the menu. I want to answer the phone without trembling and my heartbeat racing. I want give a speech if my daughter gets married.

There are reasons why I have not brought this up before on my blog. Actually, it was an unconscious decision, but when I analyse it, the reasons are pretty clear. I don't want to be known as The Stutterer who also does this, this and this. I want to be Ben who is this, this, this, this and this...and also happens to have a stutter. I hate the idea of my whole identity being wrapped up in my speech, being defined by my faults.

When I did a search earlier in the year for blogs by stutterers, I was struck by the way they spoke about their stutter. They spoke about it a lot, discussed openly their trials, their triumphs. It was in their list of interests on their profile page, often the thing listed first. It was listed in the title description even. Part of me hated this, part of me envied it. No, I don't want it to define my life. But at the same time, these people are not hiding from their problem. They are not ignoring it. They are not in denial about the fact that to some extent their speech DOES define the parameters of their life in a big way.

So I want to take this on. I will list stuttering in my profile page. I would really like to have contact with other stutterers, and this would be the ideal place to do that. The other big reason for talking about it here is to give myself a kick-start. In the near future I intend to seek out a suitable program or therapy, and I like the idea of chronicling this on my blog. Then it's out there, I am not ashamed or embarrassed, and I am accountable to follow through with it.

Well, better leave it there. Sadly I do have more to say! So I will have to write a bit more still. Feel free to skip over these posts!