I recently found myself defending the fact that I stutter. Honest!

It is a fact.  I was evaluated and diagnosed  as having a stutter,  I hear myself stutter, and other people identify my speech pattern as stuttering. Sometimes, though,someone with a more pronounced overt stutter gets a little ruffled and thinks mine is so mild in comparison that I shouldn’t identify myself as a stutterer.

I actually found myself getting defensive. I felt the need to convince him that I really do stutter. It brings me back to the time a couple of year ago when someone questioned why I was at a self help meeting for stuttering, because I obviously didn’t stutter. At the time, that person had made me feel as if I had crashed a party I wasn’t invited to.

That feeling of being caught between both worlds (fluent and stuttering) is very uncomfortable. I don’t stutter enough to “belong” with the severe overts who block a lot, and I stutter and repeat too much to pass myself off as fluent. I used to be able to do that when I just flat out avoided speaking situations.

So this guy who stutters doesn’t consider me to be a stutterer and takes offense when I identify as a stutterer because mine is not as “nasty sounding” as his.  Maybe he thinks I am a fraud. Maybe I am really impersonating being a stutterer?

My feeling is that this guy is struggling with his own stuttering issues and maybe has a problem with me having become so confident and comfortable in my skin and it shows. I have not always been like this. Just last night, at a speech I gave at Toastmasters, I told of being so afraid to be found out as a stutterer that I avoided most speaking situations. I was afraid of lots of things – mostly rejection.

My gut and heart tells me that’s what may be going on with this person, who said I don’t stutter, that I am “a fluent”. I am not a SLP nor any other kind of licensed health professional. But I am an expert in my own stuttering. Stuttering is variable, complex and situational. Its apples and oranges to two different people who stutter. It’s not a contest to see who stutters the nastiest. To me, its about how I present myself to the world. Do I communicate effectively? Do I get my point across? Do I engage and participate?

The answer, my friend, is Yes. I engage and participate with the world, sometimes while stuttering. We have to be honest with our selves first before we can be honest with the world.