For men, stuttering is often misunderstood as a sign of weakness. How can we be tough when we have trouble expressing ourselves or saying what’s on our minds?
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Living with a stutter can be very challenging. It’s often a lifelong managing process of dealing with social anxiety brought on by social punishment and unfulfilled destinies brought on by shame. But living with a stutter can also be a blessing in disguise that brings many unexpected benefits.
Stuttering, also known as stammering in some parts of the world, can be described as interrupted speech in the form of re-re-repetitions and long pauses between sy……..llab…les known as b….blocks. Meanwhile, your body could be compensating and forcing your words out by moving other body parts. This could be blinking, stamping of the feet, grimacing, pained expressions, and looking away.
These involuntary actions can create very awkward social situations when, say, chatting with a woman you have just met, asking a stranger for directions, or presenting yourself in a job interview. Stuttering is often socially misunderstood as a sign low self-esteem or bad parenting (in fact, it’s neurological). And it’s rare to meet others who stutter in your geographical area as many try to hide their impediment.
Stuttering enables us to deal with shame
My friend, David Friedman, who also stutters, explains it best. Men and women experience shame differently based on the social pressures created by society. Women are expected to be perfect and well put together without looking like they’ve spent a lot of time on it and men are expected to be tough and good providers.
For men, stuttering is often misunderstood as a sign of weakness. How can we be tough when we have trouble expressing ourselves or saying what’s on our minds?
I interviewed David about this topic on my podcast, Stuttering is Cool, a few years ago.
“Shame is about identity. You are this person that you can’t accept. Because you can’t accept yourself, you feel inferior. When you are not who you think you could be — that is shame.”
David continued by explaining how we can also feel shame about the things we haven’t done because we didn’t act like a person who we thought we should be. It can be quite jarring to the ego when you can’t get a date because you’ve been avoiding social situations in fear of receiving the familiar negative feedback. You lose trust in your conversational skills and you believe that you’ll never make a positive impression on women.
Stuttering encourages us to develop mental toughness
While there is currently no cure for stuttering, one can take speech therapy to learn techniques to help gain some control over the anatomy of speaking. But they can feel abnormal and require a lifetime commitment of regular practice in order to keep in top form.
We can also simply switch words but it’s a tactic that makes having conversations a chore, one that requires you to always stay two steps ahead in finding possible word substitutions. However, stuttering is a trickster of a phenomenon – you will eventually begin to stutter on your substituted words. And most people who stutter do so on their own name.
So as you can see, living with stuttering provides training in developing mental toughness in awkward social situations. With the right mindset, you can learn to use your stuttering to your advantage regardless of how committed you are to speech therapy. I feel that this is an important trait to have because as a father a big part of your role is to be your family’s protector, leader, role model, and mentor. Your behavior helps to shape your children’s future. And in the workplace, it’s important to be able to speak up in meetings and to authority figures.
Stuttering encourages us to improve ourselves
Fortunately, shame can sometimes be a good thing. It motivates us to improve ourselves. Stuttering gives us the drive to be the best person we can be and to overcome obstacles that even fluent people are afraid of. For example, many people who stutter win public speaking awards, become leaders, pilots, lawyers, and other roles that require a lot of speaking!
While switching words may not have been the ideal battle plan some of us may have hoped for, building a thick skin and forming a strength out of a weakness definitely is. If shame occurs when we get caught up in being the person who we are not, then the only productive alternative is to be the person who we truly are, taking our stuttering along with us.
One of my favorite quotes comes from fellow stutterer David Seidler, Oscar award winning screenwriter of The King’s Speech. During his keynote speech at the 2010 National Stuttering Association conference, he said:
“If you can live through a childhood of stuttering, you can live through anything. And if you go into adulthood still stuttering, you can handle anything… You have been tempered by the fire.”
Make and build upon small acts of courage
I attended my first podcasting conference in Toronto a few months before launching Stuttering is Cool in 2007. As you can imagine, stuttering can definitely add another element of anxiety in networking. I was still new to networking and slowly building a thick skin towards stuttering openly to strangers.
But as I took one baby step of personal courage after another by striking up conversations with more and more strangers, I was struck by how everyone saw me in a much more positive light once I told them about my podcast and my stuttering.
“Wow you are so brave to do that!”
“You are awesome!”
I admit, it was a great ego boost to hear those words. Even though I was nervous inside about getting through small talk, I was being viewed as a confident man. And women dig that.
Pursue your interests
The more I pursued my interests, put myself in speaking situations and let myself stutter openly and explain what was going on, the more positive feedback I got and the more I enjoyed being in my own skin. I also got to enjoy some unexpected opportunities — and more speaking challenges — such as giving presentations at conferences and being interviewed on national TV and radio.
If I had kept my mouth shut and stayed well within my anti-social comfort zone, I would have never come to realize that nobody actually cares that I stutter. I can still be an effective communicator. It just takes me a little longer to say my words. My friend, Grant Meredith, is a repeat winner of the lecturer of the year award at his university. He credits his stuttering for making his students more attentive. They hang on his every word anticipating which word he is going to say next.
You’ve got interests, pursue them. Attend meet ups and conferences in your area to take those baby steps in building the courage to stutter openly. You’ll quickly learn like I did that the great majority of people will look past your stuttering. Those who don’t, well, they have their own issues.
Have a sense of humor
While stuttering comes with a lot of awkward and embarrassing moments, it’s healthy and attractive for anyone to laugh at themselves. It is okay to find some humor in the shenanigans your stuttering gets you into. It shows those you’re talking to that you’re cool with your stuttering and they get the message that they can be cool with it, too.
In conclusion
By turning your communication “weakness” into a strength, you can reap the benefits of facing your speaking fears. The result is that you’ll feel more confident, because you are accepting yourself and being the man or woman you want to be.
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–Photo: Matt Slocum/AP
Excellent article! I totally agree with all of it. Stuttering really can drive self-improvement. Now just for the hard bit to put it into, erm, action….