Chapter 9. YOU'RE NOT A STUTTERER
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
It takes so much to break and beat a stutter, because stuttering is so ingrained in our identity, in who we are and what we do and how we do it, and it runs our whole entire life. So it's really important to be realistic and say it's gonna take a lot of time and work. To limit yourself to always being a stutterer makes it that much harder to increase your 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.
How could I become fluent if I was still thinking of myself as a stutterer? It made no sense. It's impossible to BEAT YOUR STUTTER while calling yourself a Stutterer. NEVER define yourself by your stutter. It's like holding the gas pedal and the brake at the same time. You're exactly right.
Between me and you, don't go telling people, but in your own mind, you're not a stutterer. Okay? Congratulations. I mean, if you were here I'd buy you a beer or print out a certificate. Because what you are now is a person who's working on his fluency. Because why not change your identity to help change your life? It's a lot of steps and a lot of work, but this is a key step.
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.
So now let's let that balloon and picture drift away from us, as far as we can, slowly, until we can hardly see it. Then let's say to the balloon, or to ourselves in a balloon, I am not a stutterer. This is important. I'm not a stutterer. I'm a person who's working on my fluency. What this is, is I'm trying to change your identity, like I changed mine, which it takes time.
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.
There's nothing I can teach you if you don't believe it's possible to improve your speech. The hardest part about gaining as much confidence as you want to gain, it's not how to do it. It's not the stuff I share. It's believing that it's possible, and believing that you can do it. I'm the first one to say you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it.
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.