Make Room For The Stuttering

This is a poem I wrote last year. I posted it on my writing site, Helium, but really haven’t shared it with anyone. It has a double meaning for me. I hope you like it.

The chains were tight for so long
Every time I struggled to loosen them
They got tighter.
I was shackled
Always dreaming how it would feel
To be free
Sometimes the chains would dig so deep
And bruise me
I would cry
Silent tears
Sometimes there were scars
But mostly scars you couldn’t see
The chains tightened
When I spoke, or didn’t
Mostly didn’t – and they choked me
It took a long time to remove the chains
Sometimes I still feel the indent
And see the faint bruises
As my skin, and me, is sensitive
Do you know what they look like?
Have you ever felt the chains?
They aren’t what you think they are
They are heavy, like a weight
I felt them, always
Cutting, digging, biting, causing
My hands and throat to clench tight
I couldn’t use my hands or throat to talk
The chains held me back, pulled me taut
Kept my mind locked
And my heart closed
And kept me from what I wanted
When they finally came off, I felt lighter
Floating, free, unleashed
These were no regular chains
They were chains of shame
And thankfully
They’re gone.
Can you tell?

I an adult who stutters who kept it hidden or covert for years, because I was afraid of how people would respond or react to me. Because of my fears and shame, I missed out on a lot! I finally had enough about 3 years ago, and have slowly worked towards being more open and allowing myself to stutter freely. It has been a wonderful journey, with the usual bumps and turns.

I have been writing on and off for the past several years, and finally decided to organize my stuff and make it available for others to read. This was something I wrote shortly realizing how helpful therapy has been for me as an adult. I had speech therapy for one year as a kid when I was in third grade. I do not recall it being particularly useful.

• Person –centered therapy: the clinician sees me as a person first, and not just a source of data collection.
• Acceptance: the clinician makes it clear that stuttering is OK, and is as comfortable letting me stutter, and listening to me stutter as she is with teaching fluency shaping or stuttering modification techniques.
• My clinician and I work together to come up with goals that are meaningful to my life. The things that we work on have relevance to my life, such as workplace presentations, interpersonal communication, reducing anxiety.
• My clinician will not ask me to do anything she herself is not comfortable doing. For example, when we worked on voluntary stuttering, the best clinician did it with me, even when she felt really weird doing it, so she got a good sense of how it feels to really stutter.
• My clinician and I recognize that life is a work in progress. Sometimes a therapy may change, or something may come up that becomes more of a priority. That is ok. I should be getting out of therapy exactly what I need.
• My clinician looks for opportunities that will help me push outside of my comfort zone.
  I look for innovative ways to engage in therapy and my clinician goes along with it. For example, I have recorded presentations I have done at work and we have reviewed them together to come up with ideas as to what I might want to work on next time. My clinicians have also listened to pod casts I have done and looked at my You Tubes.
• I need to work with a clinician who is comfortable with stuttering and is not afraid of it. That is the most important thing to me—you can get a sense of how the therapeutic relationship will go based on clinician’s comfort level.

Sometimes when you least expect it, someone will say something about your stuttering that has a real impact. And it can have the most impact when it comes from someone who doesn’t stutter.

I had a conversation with a very good friend, someone with whom I feel very comfortable sharing the “real me” and don’t hold anything back. We were talking about communication and I was sharing with him about a big presentation that I have coming up.

He asked me if I set “being fluent” as one of my goals when I speak. I told him. “No, I set out to communicate effectively. ” He went on to say that he really respects the fact that I speak openly with him, and stutter comfortably with him, with no shame.

That really struck me, that one, I do that, and two, that he felt comfortable enough with me to say that. But then he said something that really made an impact. He said, “You make room for the stuttering”. I asked him what he meant, and he went on to say that when I speak, “your stuttering is framed by so much else more, that your whole package is smooth and easy. I don’t hear you stutter, although its there—what I hear is your message”.

I felt so good after that discussion, and proud that we are comfortable enough with each other that we can honestly discuss stuff like this. I asked my friend another question: “What does my stuttering sound like to you?” And he responded that he doesn’t know—he can’t really answer that, as he hears me, not my stuttering.

This conversation between friends really spoke to me. Its not about being fluent, its not about stuttering, its about being a good communicator and being honest with yourself and the people you care about. Its about the “A” word.Being authentic with who you are allows for the authentic relationships with others in your life.