Archive for the ‘Posts’ Category
Hey, You Can’t Say You Stutter
Posted on: January 9, 2013
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Last night at my Toastmasters meeting, we were all asked to introduce ourselves and tell each other what Toastmasters has done for us. Guests or new members were asked to share how they hoped to benefit from joining Toastmasters.
Two people who spoke before me both used the word “stutter” in their introductions.
A veteran of the club said Toastmasters has helped him be more confident and effective, and not bumble and stutter with words.
A newer member said she hopes to learn to not stutter when she is nervous and to not panic as much when she does any public speaking.
This made me bristle! I felt like saying to them, “Hey, you don’t stutter! You don’t know what it’s really like to know what you want to say and have your speech disrupted or blocked.”
I felt offended that they used the word stutter so casually, when to me stuttering is so personal and has significantly shaped who I am today. I wanted to correct them, to educate them, to defend all stutterers who really stutter.
But I didn’t! It wasn’t the time or place. People weren’t there to learn about stuttering. They were at a Toastmasters meeting, where we all come to get better at communication and leadership.
I kept my bristly thoughts to myself. Maybe I need to do a speech soon on what stuttering is and isn’t!
Don’t Force It
Posted on: December 31, 2012
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On this last day in December 2012, I looked back at some of the many posts I’ve written since February 2009. It’s wondrous to me that I’ve kept up with blogging for almost 4 years. Not everyone can say that. It’s easy to start something. The hard part is sticking with it, and sustaining it.
Writing takes effort, time and persistence. We write in the hopes that other people will read and be moved. We’ve either inspired them, given them something to think about outside of their experience or have called them to action.
Writing about a pretty narrow topic for four years also takes something else – the ability to know when I have something to say and when I don’t. And to not force it when there’s nothing there. I learned that the hard way. When I first started blogging, I thought I had to write everyday.
Then I began to question that. Who said I had to write everyday in order to be a success? Being a success in my book began to mean sticking to it – persisting with writing good content. And how did I know I was writing good content? Because people were reading and leaving comments.
That was good enough for me.
Now, I see that “Don’t force it” also applies to my topic itself – stuttering. When I have something to say and I am having a particularly “stutter-y” day, the best thing to do is not force it. When caught in a block, I try to remind myself (as hard as that can be) to not force myself to push through it. Sometimes it makes the block worse.
The best thing is to stop, compose myself and breathe through the block. Taking a moment to just breathe, and not force anything, seems to help me to move forward, freely.
So it is with writing. Don’t force it – write when there is something to say. And don’t write when there is nothing to write about.
Oh, if only stuttering, and life, were so simple.
Speed Networking And Stuttering
Posted on: December 8, 2012
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Tried something totally outside of my comfort zone this week. I attended a professional networking group meeting, where the theme was “speed networking.” I was apprehensive before the meeting, as I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that it involved talking and meeting people, quickly.
Upon arrival, I was warmly greeted by the organizer, who quickly filled me in on how it works.
People sit across from each other at a long table, and in 2 minutes (one minute each) you and the person directly across from you tell as much as you can about your self and your business. You also exchange business cards.
Then one side of the table moves down a seat so you are talking to the next person.
It’s designed so that you can meet 25 or 30 people in 90 minutes, and the format “forces” you to talk, so that you can’t hang back in a corner and not participate. It’s actually quite a great idea, once you get past the nerves.
I was worried that this would be a nightmare for me, as a person who stutters. Talking fast to strangers is not anything I have “always wanted to do.”
But it wasn’t a nightmare – it went just fine. Once I chatted with the first person, I felt comfortable and confident. Did I stutter? Yep, throughout, but nobody seemed to notice or care.
This was a valuable event for me. What do you think? Could you be comfortable at this type of networking event? Share your thoughts.
Dictation Apps and Stuttering
Posted on: December 1, 2012
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How many of you have the iPhone 4S with Siri? Do you use it? Do you like it?
Today I got together with a couple of friends who stutter and we hung out over lunch and caught up, with lots of laughing and stuttering.
We got talking about the dictation apps on smartphones and one friend wanted to know how it works with someone who stutters. He wanted to know if the application “heard the stuttering” and “typed” that out. I told him I didn’t know, as I don’t stutter when I’m alone!
We decided to try it at the restaurant. I don’t have Siri, but I do have “Dragon Dictation” on my smartphone. You can speak into the recorder and the application types your words, which you then can send as a text message or post to social media.
My friends suggested I try it to see how it would work. Interestingly, I felt self-conscious doing some voluntary stuttering in front of them. I needed to do that in order to stutter enough in order for our little experiment to be valid. After a few seconds of voluntary stuttering, I found myself full-on blocking.
The recorder picked up almost exactly what I said perfectly, because it apparently took the “blocks” as just pauses. We decided that wasn’t good enough, as I hadn’t had any repetitions.
Another friend tried it. At first, he spoke as he typically does, with blocking and few repetitions. The application flashed the message “could not process.” We didn’t like that.
He then did a lot of voluntary repetitions instead of blocking. The dictation application picked up the stuttering and typed out “did did did did” as part of one of his phrases. We all said “Boo” and decided we’d had enough of this little experiment. We declared that obviously smartphone dictation applications weren’t designed by people who stutter, nor to be well used by people who stutter.
What do you think? Is there a modication that can or should be made with dictation apps for people who stutter?
I’m The Guest This Time
Posted on: November 9, 2012
I am proud and delighted to be a guest on my friend Evan Sherman’s blog and podcast that he started recently.
Evan and I have a conversation about involvement in the stuttering community, and the “evolution” of my journey. You can listen to it here.
For purists, you can also access it from this direct link – http://www.istuttersowhat.com/a-discussion-with-pam-mertz/. Evan says it drives more traffic to your site if you provide the actual link.
I am happy with how it came out. Take a listen. You can find out a little more about me and my stuttering journey. I rarely “tell my story” as I am usually asking others to share their story.
Thanks Evan!
Falling Off A Cliff
Posted on: October 27, 2012
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What does the actual moment of stuttering feel like to you?
Yesterday in a training, we were talking about metaphors and the trainer was asking us to apply metaphors for things we were feeling.
We were then to dig deep to see if we could identify the feelings behind the metaphor we chose. No one volunteered, so I took a chance.
I shared that a common metaphor for me is that I often feel like I’ve fallen off a cliff and no one has even noticed. As this was a work training on change, everyone believed I was referring to a work situation. I was not. I was referring to how I sometimes feel when I get caught in a good stuttering block.
However, since it was change we were refferring to, I let the trainer dig deeper with me and allowed her to think it was a work issue. It could have been.
She asked how it feels when I fall off the cliff. I said it feels scary and helpless. She asked if there was anything that let me know I was about to fall of the cliff. I said anxiety usually triggered it.
She asked if I knew why I was falling. I said because I wasn’t in control. Everyone was believing this was a work situation. She asked what I could do to prevent the fall. I said I could talk to someone about how I feel before the anxiety tips me over the edge.
She asked what kept me from talking about the way I felt. I said it was fear of being laughed at. She asked who was my direct report. I told her the guys name – he was right in the room. She asked what could I do to feel comfortable talking with him.
I told her I felt comfortable talking with him – that wasn’t it. She kept pushing for me to dig. I didn’t want to admit I was talking about stuttering. She asked again what was I really afraid of, still thinking I was referring to work.
I finally surprised myself and said judgement. There, I had said it. I feel like I am falling off a cliff when blocking and I fear someone is negatively judging me.
But the metaphor surprisingly fit into a pretend work scenario too. I get anxious when I feel someone at work is judging me.
The trainer felt good that I had risked and shared and felt my colleagues had learned from my share. She encouraged us to dig deep when we are feeling the impact of change in our lives. And to use metaphors to help us dig deeper.
I thought long and hard after the training and was happy that I shared this metaphor that I often feel – even though I didn’t come out and directly say I was talking about stuttering. I didn’t have to – it still related to a general fear of judgement, which is a universal fear. We all want to be accepted and not seen as different from the norm.
What about you? How do you feel in the stuttering moment? Is there a metaphor you could use to describe that feeling?
The Devil You Know
Posted on: October 8, 2012
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One of the papers on this year’s International Stuttering Awareness Day (ISAD) online conference resonated strongly with me. ISAD 2012 presentations can be found on The Stuttering Homepage.
The paper is titled Relapse Following Successful Stuttering Therapy: The Problem of Choice, by Ryan Pollard. In it, he discusses how difficult it is to change our identity, even after successful therapy for whatever the issue is-stuttering, overeating, or leaving an abusive relationship.
I commented on Pollard’s paper with a post that I titled “The Devil You Know.” People often stay in bad situations because we believe what we know may be better than the unknown. Change is scary, as is uncertainty and second guessing whether we can survive whatever change it is that may (or may not) need to be made.
I went through all of that, 3 and 4 times over. I am an adult child of an alcoholic, and as with many ACOAs, it was hard to let go of invalid beliefs, self-criticism and the constant need to please others.
I also began my journey to accept myself as a person who stutters several years ago, after spending a lifetime trying to pretend I didn’t stutter and denying how much it bothered me that I wasn’t being true to myself. As I grew to like myself more, I grew more confident and began to shed the need to defer to others and pretend to be someone I was not.
And I stayed in an abusive relationship for many years, as I thought I couldn’t ever leave and be happy, or that I just couldn’t make it on my own. I preferred the devil I was living with to the devil I didn’t know yet.
All of this leads to this: just knowing the alternatives we have in our life is often not enough for a person to make a change. I knew there was help available to leave a bad relationship, but I stayed. I knew my parents’ alcoholism was not my fault, yet I believed that for many years. I knew I could learn tools in speech therapy which would greatly minimize my stuttering, yet I chose to allow myself to stutter openly.
I remember several years ago writing a piece about “my arrival.” How would I know when I had arrived at the place in life where I would truly be happy. I also wrote about changing, and asked myself 2 questions: “what if I didn’t like the person I might become if I changed? what if I didn’t even recognize her?”
Sometimes if easy to see why we might stay with the devil we know.
What do you think?
Shared Secrets
Posted on: September 29, 2012
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All of us have secrets – those deep dark thoughts that we keep to ourselves because we are embarrassed or ashamed or we think we’re the only one.
With the rise of the stuttering community, many of us now know that we are not the only one. Maybe our secrets are similar to others who stutter. Maybe we share the same secrets!
For this post, I would really like if you could add your secret about stuttering to the comment section, and I will add it here to the post.
When we share our secrets, we feel less isolated and vulnerable.
I’ll start! Here are a couple of my secrets.
- For a long time, I would never answer my phone. I would always let the voice mail click in, so I could call back and initiate the conversation on my terms, and with words I thought I wouldn’t stutter on.
- Sometimes when I block on a word, I feel like I have disappeared for a moment and no one even notices. That feels so helpless and lonely.
- I once told a person that I went to a different college than I really did because the name of my college just wouldn’t come out that day.
Your turn! Do you have a secret about your stuttering that you’d like to share?
Lisa shared: “I always used to introduce myself as ‘Sarah’ as it was easier to say.”
Healthandheart shared: “I selectively stutter and often feel uncomfortable stuttering in front of other black people sometimes, including my family, depending on who it is.”
Tom shared: “Whenever a friend or colleague asked me to make a phone call, I would always make some excuse, but never say the real reason (that I was afraid to because of my stuttering.”)
Julia shared: “When making a phone call, I sometimes still panic and put the phone down as soon as the person answers. I ring back straight away but old feelings surrounding the phone die hard!”
Annetta shared: “I wanted to change my name from Annetta to Marie because I stutter so much on Annetta. I also had a problem with saying hello on the phone and would have a mini panic attack whenever my phone rings.”
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Make your plans now to check into this years’ International Stuttering Awareness Day (ISAD) on-line conference that starts on October 1 and runs through ISAD, 
October 22,2012.
This is always one of the marquee conferences of the year, because of its unique format. Presenters submit papers or presentations that are available to be read and commented on for three weeks. There are live threaded discussions where you can post a comment or question to an author, where you will get an answer.
There is also a section called “The Prof Is In” where a team of noted professionals and researchers in the field of communication disorders are available for three weeks to answer questions. This is a great way for parents to ask questions from some of the top stuttering specialists in the country, as well as a great way for SLP students to learn.
Many papers are written by consumers as well, meaning that you get a smorgasbord of different perspectives on all different issues of stuttering.
You can find all of this years action, as well as all of the past year’s conferences in archives at The Stuttering Home Page. Do check it out, participate and read a variety of different papers.
Thanks to Judy Kuster for all the work she does to coordinate these annual conferences of the international stuttering community.
Stuttering To Win Votes
Posted on: September 7, 2012
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An interesting story came my way yesterday. Friends from the stuttering community passed this article around – “Did Michelle Obama Fake A Stutter?” to see what “real stutterers” think of someone who may have used stuttering to exude sincerity.
Stop for a minute and think about that. Why would someone giving a powerhouse political speech at the Democratic National Convention “purposefully stutter?” To add sincerity and impact to her speech? To win the hearts of her audience members? I don’t think so.
Michelle Obama doesn’t need to try and win over her audience. She already is a strong speaker, and knows how to connect with her audience.
This is just one more way to confuse people about stuttering. As we know, the average person has normal dis-fluent moments while speaking. Even presidents do!
If Obama did have word repetitions, it wasn’t to purposely stutter so she could come off as more sincere or authentic or likeable. She had a few moments of imprecise speech like everyone does. She wasn’t using stuttering to win votes.
That’s just ridiculous!
Make Room For The Stuttering 
What people are saying!