I was talking with special friend Ramma and we got deep, as we are prone to do. Since we both stutter, we enjoy engaging each other and asking how we really think or feel about a particular aspect of stuttering. Believe it or not, he tends to analyze more than me! 

So this evening we were talking about blocking, and how he had felt about having a really bad speech day. I asked him about it. Just like me, its easier to have conversations like this with someone who stutters and really gets it. So Ramma made some phone calls on Friday. The person he was trying to reach was unavailable, so he wound up talking to someone else each time he called back. He called three times. The first time, he felt OK about his speech. He said he felt fluent. The second time, he was blocking badly (as he put it), and felt frustrated and bad about it. The third time he called, he was fine and felt fluent again.

I asked him why he felt bad. Was it because he felt bad for the listener? Ramma said no, that wasn’t it. He just feels bad when his stuttering is so unpredictable. He doesn’t understand why it can vary so much in the course of one day, with telephone conversations with the same person. He said it must be the mystery of stuttering.

I chimed in that I often feel the same way, and that yes, stuttering, and how we feel about it, is very complex. Just the night before, someone had asked me about some pharmacy samples. I didn’t hear it clearly, so I attempted to clarify, and asked, “Did you mean sam-sam-sam . . . . .?” It wasn’t coming out. So I wound up saying, “What did you say?’ I gave in, and I hate that, but it happens, almost unconsciously sometimes.

Ramma went on to describe how it feels sometimes when he is stuck in a block. He said it feels like someones hand is tightening on his throat. I asked if he meant feeling suffocated, and he said exactly, that’s how he sometimes feels.

Ramma went on to share that he always remembers the story of Moses, and from descriptions he read, he could relate to Moses’s stuttering. In the Quran, Moses said, “My chest narrows and my tongue fails to express. …”  It is known that Moses asked that his brother Aaron be allowed to speak for him. When Moses went to deliver a message to the Pharaoh in Egypt, it was said that Moses should not be believed since “he couldn’t talk right.” In the Christian Bible, references are made to Moses being “slow of speech” and that he had also asked that his brother be allowed to speak for him.

Ramma really related to the piece about the “chest feeling narrow”. He explained that when he blocks, his chest feels tight and he feels he is gasping for air. We then talked about breathing and how deep breathing is supposed to help. Ramma spoke of hearing about different breathing techniques and asked if I had tried any. I shared that I had, but it’s hard for me to sustain. We both agreed that it is difficult to carry over into real-time conversation, because it takes too much time.

Its funny how much I find we really want to talk about these things, but only with other people who get it. Someone who has never stuttered may not understand that real feeling of being squeezed, choked, restricted, suffocated, all while just simply trying to say a word. Saying a word -what most people absolutley do not think about and just take for granted. I appreciate when Ramma and I share -we dare to talk about things that we think about, but don’t always feel comfortable bringing up with anyone else.

What about you? How do you feel when you get stuck in a good block? Do you even think about it?