Stuttering

When I was a child I grew up with a stutter. I'm not sure how old I was when it started but what I do know is I'm fairly sure it's genetic as my grandfather and my father and my fathers twin all do as well. My father has three daughters and his twin has three sons, and I for some reason am the only one who inherited it. My parents divorced before I was even one and my mom gained custody of me and I would see my father every other weekend so the majority of the time I was with my mother.

My mother told me that when I was younger she decided to put me into speech therapy for my stutter, I am unsure of how old I was as I do not remember going to therapy for it, and I didn't believe her as I continued my life to have this speech impediment.

Although as far as I can remember I've been this way. Although when I look up stuttering videos or see others stutter its very different than mine. As I get older, me being 20 now, my stutter has gradually gotten better over the years through time but never gone away. My stutter I have noticed has a pattern. I am a very reclusive quiet individual, just very to myself. As a child the stutter was basically every sentence every so many words, and even as a child I knew certain sounds and letters would trigger it, I know don't remember them. Because as I got older I somehow figured a system.

I can't speak for every person who stutters especially since the only others I know personally are my family, but its almost as though I play the sentence I am about to say in my head very quickly and I can spot the word or sound I'm going to have trouble with and to stop it I enter in other usually unnecessary words into my sentence to stop it from happening. All happens within seconds, like while having a quick paced conversation with someone. These words usually included "and" the most, as I have never stuttered on that word, same with "or". And for someone who isn't use to talking to me it sounds strange. For instance I would think the sentence in my head "Hey we should hang out at my house after school today" and lets say I played that in my head and could tell the word "at" and "school" so I would automatically instead say "Hey we should hang out and at my house after or school today". Sounds strange which I know it does so I can usually only talk like that with friends and family so with people I don't know I have to talk much much much slower and think about what I am going to say very closely.

I used that method in my middle school/high school years. Before that I just spoke freely and let my stutter happen naturally. But as you get older you just want to fit in so that's what I did. Now as an adult my stutter somehow has just changed. I no longer stutter in practically every sentence, now my stutter is more situational. Now I stutter when for some examples when I order food, or when I'm angry, or excited, or when I have to talk in front of a lot of people, or when I record myself. As an adult I just let it happen since my stuttering is far from how often it use to be. I can still sense what I'm going to stutter on but I just don't care anymore or at least not nearly as much.

The last thing I would like to say is stuttering for me even to this day is definitely on a scale. Sometimes a stutter for me will just be a pause, sometimes I will repeat a sound once or twice, and sometimes when its at its worse a word will sneak up on me and I will sit there like a broken record for 20 seconds with my eyes rolled and my body tweaking.

My best friend has known me since the 5th grade so she knows me very well and she can actually tell when I'm about to, how? I don't know but she does and she will finish a word for me, which is wonderful. One of my other friends is actually in college right now to be a speech therapist because of m which I think is amazing. And she always likes to hear my thoughts and such and her goal in life is to find a therapeutic cure for stuttering, which I am so proud of

If you're reading this, and you stutter as well please say what you think. Do you have any similarities? Differences? Comments? Anything

Welcome bcrim98!

I'm the moderator for this forum and I chose to moderate here because I also stutter irl. I tend to really enjoy chatting online because I don't show my stutter. For some reason, my stutter tends to show or occur with vowel sounds. Not necessarily the vowel letters, but the sounds themselves. I also play a little game with the wording and insert other words in a sentence if I catch myself about to stutter. I have been married 18 years and my husband wouldn't believe I ever stuttered, I've come to adapt and weasel my way around the stutter. I do fear getting up in front of people and having to do a speech. I can't escape the fear and my voice changes and I do stutter at that time. But once I get comfortable and at ease, I can talk as if I were talking to a very good friend.

I hated when I was asked to read in school, all through the years because eventually I would end up stuttering and I'd feel so bad, I just wanted to go hide somewhere. I learned a tiny bit of German and the word for "I" spelled "Ich" always made me look bad. I hated to repeat sounds like that when we were supposed to make a sentence in German. I knew the material but I hated to speak it when I got so nervous, which was always during class time.

I had speech therapy for a couple of years and it did nothing for me. I just stutter sometimes. Sometimes not much, other times, a lot. But well, I am me and I stutter. Simply put.