Chapter 9. MORE THAN MY STUTTER

For years I labeled myself as a stutterer. But I was so much more.

For years I labeled myself as a stutterer. But I was so much more. I was a son and a brother. A boyscout and a runner. I was an A/B student. But nevertheless I defined myself by my obstacle. I thought of myself as no more than the challenge I was facing. You can bet what this did to my self-esteem.

I'm a person who's working on my fluency

Stuttering had become part of how I thought about myself and what I expected from my life. I wanted a description of myself that left room for the work I was doing. That is why I started thinking of myself as a person working on his fluency.

For purposes of self-confidence and self-belief, think about the statement this way: You are currently living with stuttering. But I don't think you deserve to limit your mind to always thinking you will live where stuttering dominates your life.

One of the first things that I figured out was I could not continue to call myself a stutterer. Someone who stutters. So I could not call myself that and then gain fluency. It did not seem possible. So I started to call myself, to myself, like this was something I kept internally, but I started to call myself someone who was working on my fluency. I think that was really big, because it was my identity. For 15 years of my life or so my identity was I stuttered, but I did not want that to be it. I wanted to be someone, for me, who was working on my fluency. I kept that with me, and I think that was really powerful.

You don't need to make a big announcement about this to your friends and your family. What I did was I kept this in my own head, and it made me feel 1% better. It made me feel just a little bit better that hope



was possible. It's the beginning blocks of what helped me beat my stutter. I hope it helps you beat yours, too.

Calling myself a person working on his fluency gave me hope. It helped me stop reducing my whole identity to the thing I struggled with. That was useful to me. The word stutterer means something different to different people, and using it does not decide whether a person can improve.

Try describing yourself in a way that makes room for what you want to do. For me, that was a person working on his fluency. Keep the words that fit you. You can speak openly about your stutter and still work toward your goals.

Think of your life as like a ruler

I want you to think of your life as like a ruler, like a timeline. You guys know what that is from when you were kids. Alright, so I know this is going to sound crazy, but think of it like it's a ruler, and it starts when you're born, at like a day old, right?

I want you to think to yourself at what age you started to stutter. I want you to think of the life from when you were that young into where you are now. I want you to think to yourself, that's how many years. You don't have to say it, but in my case it was a lot, right? So maybe it's 10, maybe it's 15, but think about that number.

Now we're gonna put like a balloon. So like the balloons that you see when you're kids, like the balloon animal guy who can blow stuff, right? So let's put a long balloon around, for when you started to stutter, until where you are now, and let's tie it off. Our beliefs changed, and it's not our fault.

Say to yourself, in that balloon, my beliefs were that I stutter. That I am a stutterer. All sorts of stuff. It's the beliefs, in this balloon, that it's hard to talk. That I get humiliated when I speak. When I get called on, I get intimidated. I can't say my name. All of those negative self-talk beliefs. All of the bad memories that you replay in your head, especially before



you go to sleep. All the cringiest moments as you're falling asleep. That was my favorite.

In that imagined exercise, I picture letting the old judgment drift away and describing myself as a person working on his fluency. That was the identity I wanted to grow into. You can choose words that fit your own experience; the purpose is to leave room for your life and your goals.

Do you think it's possible for you?

I kind of feel like you're full of excuses or something, and that's okay. But let me see, just one question. Do you think that you can get better fluency long term? Do you think it's possible for you? I just want to know what you believe.

You can have doubts and still try something that matters to you. I believe in the possibility of change, and I want to encourage you. The ideas I share need to be useful in your life; belief alone does not guarantee an outcome.

But you should believe that you can have confidence. Because what I'm saying specifically is, if you don't believe in yourself enough, know that I believe in you. I believe in you. I believe that you can have confidence.