The Invisible Challenges of Stuttering
Transcriber: Dzaki Jabbar Mahdi
Reviewer: Eunice Tan
One per cent of the world’s population
experiences stuttering.
One per cent.
But this talk is for everyone else,
to help you better understand
the challenges that we face.
Everyone can see the physical struggle
when someone is having a stuttering block,
but the psychological battle
is still wildly misunderstood.
The ancient Greeks, for all their wisdom,
attempted to cure stuttering
by having people speak
with rocks in their mouth.
They would even cut off
pieces of your tongue
to alleviate an invisible tension.
Fortunately for people like me,
speech therapy and coaching
has come a long way since then.
In the next few minutes,
I’m going to give you an insight
into the mindset behind
how it feels to have a stuttering block.
Stuttering is like walking
along an unreliable bridge.
The bridge is your voice,
and below is a river
that you do not want to fall into.
The deeper your insecurities
and the lower your -
lower your self-esteem,
the deeper the river
and the bigger the fall.
As you walk along this bridge,
step by step, word to word,
you can feel the bridge creaking
and tension rising.
It’s almost inevitable that you will fall
into this river of shame, embarrassment
and previous negative experiences.
You reach the first
massive gap and freeze.
Something is preventing you
from making that next step,
and the next word seems out of your reach.
You take a deep breath
and begin to jump, but hold back.
You try again and again
and eventually you make that leap.
You just about reach the other side,
and you cling on
to that sand for dear life
to pull yourself up and over
to complete that word.
This process repeats itself
several times a day.
It can be mentally draining
and very stressful.
And as you get older, more difficult
bridges await and big life decisions.
You start avoiding.
You avoid words, sounds, careers,
relationships and eventually life.
Once I realised it was OK
to jump into that river
and face my insecurity,
reveal my security,
my ability to express myself
and be myself opened up.
It’s taken a long time, but I’m no longer
afraid of stuttering openly in public.
That was the key to my freedom:
I took control of the narrative.
And if you are facing
an invisible struggle of your own,
that could be the key to yours.
If you happen to come across
a person who stutters
or anyone experiencing
a visible or invisible challenge,
just give them time
to walk along their bridge
and appreciate
that there is a river beneath
that you cannot see or fully understand.