commentr/StutterOctober 31, 2025

Content

As I said, I’m old lol. I’m not up with the state of the art that has evolved, so my advice may not be any good anymore. The most obvious one for me was word substitution. I could not, for example, say the word “middle”, so I just said “center”. That worked for me. But if I want to order an English muffin, I couldn’t say muffin, so I might just order toast and hate myself for it. Sometimes when I knew a bad word was coming up, I’d get ready for it and when it was time to say it, I would very slightly modify the actual sound of the beginning of the word with a slightly shorter pronunciation. I think of it as accepting a lazy way of saying it. Sorry this sounds really silly as I type this right now. I’m a jazz musician and for us, improvisation is the main thing. This means I try to hear a musical phrase in my head a split second before I have to play it. Apply that to talking. So I will try to hear a “stutter word” in my head but as perfectly as possible right before I have to speak it. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes being aware of my breathing helps. It can help with relaxation. Mostly for me it’s small victories over time. But I know that I’m a person who stutters. Even when im fluent. This struggle has made me who I am. I just heard a podcast where the person said her goal is that people work with her not in spite of her stutter but because of it. (Sam Gennuso on the Proud Stutter podcast.) Accepting that I am a person who stutters is something I only just learned is okay. But it’s also okay to work to have more fluency because it makes communication easier sometimes.

Themes

Anticipation & AvoidanceCauses & VariabilityCoping & AdvocacyIdentity & Disability

Subthemes

Avoidance & SubstitutionOverthinking & MonitoringSituational VariabilityFluency TechniquesAcceptance & Pride

Codes (1)

propositionality