Content
My story According to my mom I started stuttering after a trauma. I was around three years old and was playing with pearls. Somehow a pearl got stuck in my nose and we went to the hospital to take it out. I started to stutter immediately after they got it out. So the doctor got me an appointment for a speech therapist and I went there for a few years. I'm not sure if it helped at all, since I don't have memories from this whole event. When I was six years old we moved from Sweden to Finland. I started school here in Finland and I remember getting teased for it every now and then. My earliest memory from teasing was from fifth grade. Also, the same year my teacher told me I had a stutter. After that I started to hold back and didn't talk as much. 7th to 9th grade I didn't pay so much attention to it. 10th to 12th grade I started again to pay attention because I noticed it had gotten worse and my sister, always got annoyed when I started talking. She has always reacted negatively on my stutter and called me names and always pointed out how annoying it was (still does). For the past two years I have had a lot of anxiety because of the stutter. I have cried so many times wishing I was fluent, mute or to have any other condition but this. I avoid talking to strangers and talking on the phone since it gets a lot worser while speaking on the phone. Now I'm 20 and I have never hated myself this much. Also, I won't accept the stutter. If I don't find a way to get rid of it, then I rather keep quiet for the rest of my life. After all, I almost never speak since I know how annoying people find it to be, so "becoming" mute wouldn't change anything really. Forgot to mention earlier, I'm a female and I'm not sure how serve my stutter is. I have no idea really, it varies from day to day. Sometimes I reach almost full fluency and sometimes I stutter on every word. My mother thinks it's not that serve but it really depends on with who I'm talking to and location. Because of the stutter I have isolated myself from people. Every time I stutter, I start to hate myself a bit more. I'm scared of social situations (ordering at restaurants etc).