Adapted from: Wrestling Through Adversity

Reading Into Stuttering

When I was attending an all-girl’s Catholic high school at 15, I sat next to a classmate who had a severe speech impediment, which was pronounced in history class. The method employed by our teacher, a nun, was to make us read one-by-one a section of the chapter in our text we were working on that week. It seemed no matter where the teacher started in the classroom lineup, we always seemed to end up with Gretchen reading a section. This would have been fine if she could read well, but she could not because she stuttered.

Being a slow reader myself, I sat there next to her with dreaded anticipation during this class routine of learning by rote because we all hung on Gretchen’s next word that never came forth from her lips, as her face turned bright red in embarrassment.

You could call this a form of bullying because the inexperienced teacher could have initially believed that this activity of futility would work to help Gretchen read more clearly and improve the stutter but after two semesters of trying out the reading method and Gretchen’s speech did not improve, she should have surmised that it was a lesson of sheer torture for her.

Lacking Therapy to Improve Speech

At our school, there was no such thing as counselors or speech therapists, and I doubt if Gretchen had help outside school either. I noticed that she did not have many friends to talk to, so I was nice to befriend her, although I did not know her socially at home or her family situation. Outside the classroom, she talked to me with hardly a stammer. After that year I moved on and so did she, but I always wondered what happened to her.

Recently, I met up with Gretchen at a high school class reunion. I saw her at the check-in table and noted that when someone asked her name, she hesitated a little. I introduced myself to her later, and at first she did not recognize me, but upon seeing my class picture she did. She was sitting alone when I asked her how her life turned out and told her that I remember her as being smart. With this she looked directly at me and said: “No. I was actually very stupid.”  She continued by saying that her life was a horrible mess because, after high school graduation, she got married young, had children, and was divorced in her twenties. From there, she said, her life went downhill even further.

Her voice was clear and emphatic enough to understand her words, but her regret was quite alarming to me. At first, I did not know what to make of her response or what to say but figured her speech impediment was a contributing factor to her demise. Before I left the dangling conversation, I handed her a bookmark for my book: Wrestling Through Adversity, thinking  perhaps she could get some solace and guidance from it after reading it.

In contrast to this saga with a high school friend, let’s move past it to a case story I wrote about in my book that shows how a teen, Liam, overcame a speech impediment and bullying by using his own voice and Mind Power.

Liam Comes of Age

At 13, during his “coming of age” in society, Liam wanted to express himself verbally, but he was limited by a severe stutter. He had numerous speech therapy sessions from an early age, but to no avail, which he seemed to accept as his reality. However, something changed in Liam’s attitude towards his speech impediment in that he started to notice girls.

Liam was discriminated against by his peers, made fun of, and stigmatized because of the stutter, and could not verbally defend himself, which made it worse. When his mother suggested that he visit me, as a peak performance coach, to improve his speech, he readily agreed, primarily because he liked a girl who rode on the school bus with him and wanted to meet her but became tongue-tied when he approached her.

The second reason why Liam wanted to improve his speech was related to his high intelligence because he was gifted in math, and when he readily raised his hand to answer math problems, he could not say the numbers or give the answers he knew were correct. Liam felt that his classmates and teachers thought he was stupid.

During the initial consultation, some evidence of stuttering was apparent. However, Liam was able to express clearly enough to me what he thought, why he was coming for sessions, and how he was feeling. He seemed glad to get some assistance but was somewhat skeptical because he questioned if learning how to use the Mindful Toughness® skillsets and tools I gave him would really work for him to overcome his speech challenges.

Breathing Easy & Other Mindful Toughness® Skillsets Used

I started off by teaching Liam self-hypnosis to get in the Zone with Breathing Easy to relax and focus, and we made a game plan to approach a girl, which included how to introduce himself, the content of what to say, and the exact words of the dialogue that he could rehearse. We worked with triggers for relaxation, such as by taking deep breaths before the approach, by circling the fingers of his non-dominant hand, and by saying  the pre-rehearsed words: Easy and Relax.

Liam was shown how to cancel out negative words and pictures and to substitute positive ones. In addition, we practiced experientially during the hypno-practice sessions, and we rehearsed to set the stage for his participation in math class in his imagination. In his mind’s eye, he saw and felt himself achieving his goals. Each session, during progressive muscle relaxation  of his body, I aided him in relaxing the throat chakra and the larynx by adding this suggestion: “Now you can say all the words you always wanted to say but never felt you could.”

I used a stuffed animal lion as a model, and devised imagery I called, The Lion That Roared.” Liam, in his imagination, became the lion. In the story, the youngest lion was afraid to speak up and roar, but secretly admired the “King of the Mountain,” who was the leader of the pack and had the biggest, loudest roar of all that echoed for miles.

Each day Liam would follow the King to the top of the mountain and listen to him expressing himself bravely with vigor. At first the young lion (Liam) was intimidated by the King. He tried to speak, but he could not. No roars were audible, just little squeaks. As he became braver and stronger, Liam was instructed to approach the girls on the school bus and introduce himself, and to raise his hand in class.

When Liam returned to my office the following week, we put his performance on a feedback loop, without recrimination. On his first attempt on the school bus, he was too scared to approach the girls and did not answer questions in class. However, the following week, the sound of his voice was louder when he roared in session, so he approached girls and tried in class to speak, but again he could not find the words.

During the next session, I asked him how the conversation with the girls went and what happened in class. At this time, he looked at me and broke down in tears, emoting he was not making progress and that it was too hard for him to roar like the lion King. I asked him why he thought this, and his answer was that I did not understand him and how difficult it was for him to speak up. I asked: What is it that I don’t understand?

Liam was adamant when he replied, stating, “You don’t understand that there are words I cannot say and never will.”

During hypno-practice on this day, I took him up to the top of the mountain and used lion imagery once again. I told him to roar as loud as he could, along with the King. At the completion of the session, he opened his eyes, and I asked him directly while in a post-hypnotic (hypnopompic) state, “So, Liam, what are the words you cannot say?”

He then automatically and fluently spoke out in a confident, clear voice, and he said all the words he thought he could not say. We both chuckled and were pleasantly surprised by this. Liam was so pleased with himself, and the truth set him free, which also set him up for future conversations with girls and in math class, where he confidently solved life problems.

Transforming Stutter Into Strength

Liam was not the only person who learned how to build his strength by managing his stutter. He had great leaders as role models on how to do it. One was King George VI who had a serious stammer. Contributing factors reported in the archives point to King George being made fun of by his father and brother. He expressed anger towards his stutter and felt embarrassed, which interfered with public speaking. That is until he worked with a speech therapist. As a result, he presented the best speech of his life in 1939, for which he gave moral strength and clarity, helping the British people to rally during war.

President Joe Biden was another leader who experienced bullying because of a stutter. During his presidency, even though he was bullied by other politicians, he helped a young boy with a stutter to see that he was smart, handsome, and knew what he was doing to accomplish anything in life.

In our society, we, too,  should follow their leads, as well as that of FDR who gave us the Four Freedoms, one of which is Freedom of Speech and self-expression.

If you have enjoyed and benefitted from this blog, you can learn more about my peak performance coaching practice on my website, https://www.idealperformance.net and about my book: Wrestling Through Adversity: Empowering Children, Teens, & Young Adults To Win In Life, on https://www.drchristinesilverstein.com.

The book is available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and Audiobook. It contains other case stories of interest from my practice and details on how to use Mindful Toughness® skillsets to improve your performance and meet your goals. The Amazon page contains many interesting reviews that enumerate the value the book holds for these readers.

I invite you to follow me on my Facebook page, The Summit Center for Ideal Performance and subscribe to my educational YouTube channel, The Young Navigator, to meet me face-to-face.