Have you ever watched a movie and one of the characters stutters? Everyone laughs, maybe says a few names (Ever heard of stuttering stanley?), and soon, they forget about it.

Have you ever actually thought that these specific movie characters could portray the lives of real people? Its true. I am one of the millions of people who stutter. It is sort of funny to me how many misconceptions there are about stuttering. No, I am not mentally retarded. No, I do not have a hearing problem. No, I am not nervous. Yes, I DO know what I want to say. Imagine knowing exactly what you want to say and it wont come out. Your heart begins to pound, you may get all sweaty and even feel a little sick. The air feels like it has been sucked out of your lungs. While all these symptoms sound a LOT like a panic attack (and they very well might be), this is what happens when someone stutters on a word.

Just to clarify, this is what happens when many people block on a word (as in the word simply gets stuck so to speak). This may not happen with ALL people who stutter; but again, this is my blog, and I am writing things from my perspective.

I began stuttering at age 7- the summer between 1st and 2nd grade I noticed I was beginning to randomly have days where I wasnt talking exactly the way I was supposed to. I would have a day here and a day there of “dis-fluency” or stuttering. Of course, this made me think there was something wrong with me. This made me feel different.. I became afraid of what ever was happening to me.

In first grade, I was a VERY outgoing energetic 6 year old. I would raise my hand randomly and announce to the class things like, “just to let everyone know, dont drink orange juice after brushing your teeth; its gross!”, or announcements such as, “we got a new goldfish! I named him Goldy”. To say I was outgoing is almost an understatement. I made friends with the entire class (and anyone in the hallway I most likely ambushed to say hello) and made sure everyone in the room knew I was there. I guess you could say I had spunk and loved to talk.

When second grade rolled around the school saw a shy, quiet, scared little girl. I simply refused to talk. I was terrified at whatever had begun happening during the summer. This weird stuttering thing had decided to stick around. The more afraid of it I was, the worse it got. The worse it got, the more mute I became. It got to the point where if I was called on, I pretended I didn’t hear. I pretended I wasn’t there. All I wanted to do was disappear.

Fast forward 11 years. I was 19 and in my sophomore year of college. I had been thinking for years and years why I stutter. I had noticed I only stutter in certain situations. I could read aloud to myself without stuttering once. I could talk to animals and small children without stuttering at all. When I was really angry, I could yell just fine until the sun came up without stuttering. I began to notice whenever I was emotionally invested in whatever I was saying, my speech was perfectly normal. (just a side note- I hate using the word normal. I believe there is no such thing as normal. “normal” is in the eye of the beholder. I’ll use average from now on). I had started to notice that if I was intimidated by someone, I stuttered more. I noticed if I was speaking to someone who had judged me in the past, I stuttered more. I noticed I had a huge fear of being judged and many times when I would open my mouth to talk, my brain was racing with thoughts like, “what if they judge me” “will they think I’m mentally retarded?” “what if I cant say my name right”..all of these “what if’s” consumed me.

This is when I began to realize: Stuttering has absolutly NOTHING to do with my speech. If it did, I would stutter in all situations and I would probably stutter on the same sounds/words/etc. I started to focus on my intense fears that would pop up out of no where when I knew I had to talk. These fears werent always there; it depended on who I was talking to; it depended on how comfortable I was in the given situation.

I tried to tell an on campus speech pathologist that stuttering was a fear of judgement. That it was psychological. Of course, they reassured me the problem involved the muscles in my throat and in fact did revolve around my speech mechanisms. They decided sitting me in a room and reading outloud slowly would help me “learn to control” my stutter. After many times of doing this (and each time, me getting more and more comfortable with the girl I was reading to) I was not stuttering. I had gotten comfortable. The fear of judgement was gone.

I realized they were never going to listen to me. It’s been 3 years since that incident and I have found a lot of research that supports Neuro Semantics of Stuttering. This is the belief I had all along- Stuttering is psychological.

I am starting this blog to help Get the word out (like my title) about stuttering. To help other people who stutter realize they ARE normal. They COULD talk just fine if they really work at changing the way they see themselves and the world. I want people to realize that stuttering does NOT involve our speech mechanisms inside of us, that stuttering does NOT mean you are mentally disabled, that stuttering is NOT a nervous habit, and that just because someone may stutter it does NOT mean they dont know what they want to say. They probably do and they are probably really really frusterated that those words won’t seem to just come out of their mouth.

I hope you will learn something from this blog. Maybe you’ll even go out there and Get the word out too :)