Welcome to Beneath Your Stutter

If you're a person who stutters, it's not uncommon to have no idea why it's happening in certain situations. Instead of being frustrated by it, dive deep each week with Paige Smith, a certified coach and PWSS as she reveals the fluency factors behind covert and situational stuttering. Go beneath the surface of your stutter to gain deeper self-awareness leading to personal growth and transformation.

Links

What’s Your Stutter Personality? Take the quiz to find out! https://www.thehappystutterer.com/quiz/

Recovery from Stuttering Relapse: Coaching solutions with Paige
https://www.thehappystutterer.com/services/

Website: Learn more https://www.thehappystutterer.com/

Instagram: Follow here https://www.instagram.com/thehappystutterer/

Transcript

Welcome. I'm so thrilled you're here, and I'm delighted to introduce this podcast to you called Beneath Your Stutter. I'm your host Paige Smith, a certified professional coach at the Happy Stutter. I'm dedicated to supporting adults like you who stutter, especially if you're still struggling since childhood.

You may even have some speech therapy in the past. So over the course of this podcast, I'll be bringing my own experiences as a mentor and teacher. I'll be sharing my stories and the vast knowledge I've gained during my own journey while getting to the other side of stuttering. I've dedicated each episode to you where we'll dive deep below the surface of the iceberg into the inner experiences of stuttering.

You may have heard of the stuttering iceberg, a term coined by Dr. Joseph Sheehan, a well-known figure in the history of stuttering. The stuttering iceberg depicts how the physical manifestations and visible clues of stuttering only scratch the surface of the true experience. He says, quote: Stuttering may be likened to an iceberg with the major portion below the surface.

What people see and hear is a smaller portion far greater and more dangerous and destructive is that which lies below the surface, experienced as fear, guilt, and anticipation of shame. And I couldn't agree more. There is so much more beneath the tip of the iceberg, and that's what we're here to explore.

Beneath your stutter will focus on the invisible factors of stuttering, specifically around covert stuttering and variable or situational stuttering. There are various factors that often go unnoticed, but have a significant impact on your speech and quality of your life.

I call these the freedom fluency factors. F factors. You might wonder why it's crucial to understand what's going on beneath your stutter. Through my own struggles with stuttering, I've come to believe that only when you truly understand yourself, you can better support yourself in ways that help you. It's about releasing the negative thoughts and toxic feelings that unconsciously creates tension in your body, which when this tension is let go of, improves your speech naturally.

Now, as you'll notice, there is very little, if any, stuttering at all in my speech right now. But believe me, this was not always the case since childhood stuttering had a tight grip on me. I was a covert stutterer. Consumed with guilt and shame, and I spent my days trying so hard not to stutter and to be as fluid as possible.

Only in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would get to this point, but with perseverance, the right knowledge and slowly growing in new ways, I'm able to speak with greater ease and flow. So believe me when I say if it's possible for me, I know it's possible for you too. Stuttering doesn't have to define you.

Yes, it's a part of your unique journey, but no. That is one you don't have to go through alone. I'm here to help you navigate that journey with insight, compassion, and a whole lot of support. So if you're ready to dive deep into the inner experience of your stutter, join me on this empowering and transformative adventure. Together we'll uncover the tools, knowledge and confidence you need to express yourself more freely. My aim is for each episode to provide a new level of understanding and awareness.

I know you're already an expert on your own stutter, but with beneath your Stutter, I want to bring you to an even deeper level of understanding and transformation. I wish for this podcast to be a bridge to help you cross that gap between where you are now. And where you want to be.

It's an invitation to embrace vulnerability, celebrate growth, and find true acceptance within yourself. Thank you for joining me on this incredible journey. Let's set off together and explore the depths of stuttering so you can emerge stronger and more empowered to navigate the world with confidence.

Now here is a taste of some sample clips from the first few episodes. Enjoy. Research shows that healthy brain architecture depends on a steady foundation of a stable and responsive relationship with an engaged, caring adult or caretakers. When this happens, neural connections are built and strengthened in the child's brain that supports the development of communication and social skills to a growing child.

A responsive relationship with a parent is both expected and essential. However, When this dynamic is not there, this absence is a serious detriment to a child's development and wellbeing, like a game of tennis with a ball bouncing back and forth. I believe, this dynamic of serve and return with sadly missing in my development growing up.

As a child, I remember being talked about in the third person as if I didn't exist, as if I wasn't even there. I felt like I was not a real person yet because I was a child. Of course, I remember being talked to, telling me what to do, what not to do, how to behave. I felt I was always being criticized even if I wasn't doing anything wrong.

The sad thing is I don't ever remember my mom talking with me. My mom grew up in an uninformed era when children were best thought to be seen but not heard. Thank goodness, this old-fashioned way of thinking is now outdated. But to be fair, my mom was most likely parenting the same way that she was parented.

However, this left me growing up feeling not heard, listened to, or more importantly, feeling like I mattered. Communication was never a game of serve and return. Conversation never flowed back and forth. It always seemed one-sided. So because I did not learn and develop this critical skill of serve and return, my inexperience and lack of practice of speaking at home left me with the lack of skills of speaking in the real world.

Stuttering is complex and there is no single silver bullet, one size fits all kind of solution. When I went for speech therapy, it was in a group. Yes, there was some benefits to this, but I felt that everyone was treated the same.

When what I really needed was one-on-one attention, and this is where coaching is customized to you to do the deeper work in a private and intimate way. When I went for speech therapy, the traditional approach for stuttering treatment focused primarily on fluency techniques.

Back then, there was very little, if any, focus on the emotional and mental inner workings of stuttering. Now, to be honest, I'm not sure how much this has changed these days, but the truth is for long lasting personal change of any sort, the secret to success is 80% psychology. Working with the mindset versus the smaller 20% apply to the actual mechanics or behavioral changes.

Maybe what I needed is not more speech therapy. Maybe what I needed is the shifts in mindset, attitude, and beliefs that account for the other 80% that leads to true success In my own experience, concentrated effort in the short term produced fluency quite quickly, but it was the deeply ingrained negative self-talk and toxic emotions that chipped away at any gains that I had made in my speech with fluency. Let me ask you this. Do certain people, places, or objects tend to make you stutter more? For instance, do you stutter more in these situations around an authority figure on a job interview or even when talking on the phone? If so, you are experiencing triggers in your environment. So what are triggers?

Triggers are anything that evokes an automatic and emotional reaction. It can be words, persons, events, or experiences.

These triggered reactions might leave you feeling unsettled, nervous filled with dread, fear, and anxiety. These reactions can happen anytime, anywhere, but for most people, you're either at home, school or at work. So at home you may find yourself stuttering more around certain family members. Maybe it's your parents or maybe another relative or friend.

Or maybe your speech is fine at home, but you find yourself stuttering more at school. so if you found school challenging when you were young, You might still find oral exams and public speaking presentations challenging in post-secondary education.

School may have been a place where you were singled out as different, you might have been bullied, teased, or ridiculed by your peers. And it's not easy to just forget these traumatic experiences now that you're an adult. At work, if you're now out of school and in the workplace, stuttering can pose hurdles in a professional setting.

Job interviews, phone calls, client meetings, and presentations can be daunting. If you avoid these things, it can potentially affect your career advancement. So to play it safe, you might gravitate towards careers where there's no speaking, or at least where speaking is minimized. It is important to understand how your environment impacts you, so that no matter where you are, whether you're at home, school, or work, you can see how your environment affects you and stuttering.