There were times I couldn’t say my first name without a major block. Nothing came out but silence. My name was the big one.
Then I'd push. I'd try to force it. I wanted the moment over. I wanted to be able to say the damn word.
I've talked a lot about how that felt afterward. Embarrassed. Small. Then I'd replay it. I could be out of the situation and still be thinking about what had happened. That part of it stayed with me.
Is that the same as a pause in a conversation?
No. I've made that distinction when talking about conversation. Sometimes the other person is quiet. Sometimes there's a natural pause. I used to feel that I had to fill every gap because I was insecure.
I learned that I could let some of that silence be there. When I described that, I specifically said I wasn't talking about silence from a stuttering block. I was talking about an ordinary pause between people.
Those were different experiences for me. In one, I was struggling with something I wanted to say. In the other, I was putting pressure on myself to keep the conversation going every second.
What did the word moderate mean to me?
Speech therapists officially classified my stutter as moderate. It was anything but moderate to me.
What was I trying to change?
I wanted to have a conversation without spending the rest of the day beating myself up about a word.
That's why you'll hear me talk about the moment before speaking, the actual exchange, and what I said to myself afterward. I had a lot going on around that difficult word. I was trying to work on that whole experience.
My name, an ordinary order, a conversation with somebody who intimidated me: those were the situations I was trying to get better at. They mattered because they were my life.
My rule about pushing through a block
I have been firm about this: never push through a block. In my recording about it, I said:
This philosophy to never push through a block, it's firm and concrete.
I was thinking about more than getting that one word out. I knew how I felt after forcing a block, and how I could keep replaying it afterward. I wanted to carry my speech into the next conversation too.
Don't sacrifice the fluency for the rest of the day. Don't take away your chance to have good speech in the next conversation or later on that day by pushing through a block.
That quotation records how firmly I spoke about it. I want to make the scope clear now: forcing a block could leave me upset and replaying it, sometimes for the rest of the day. It does not follow that a block makes later good speech impossible for you. Getting your message across still matters, including when it takes a block to say it. My preference for substitution applies when another word keeps the meaning accurate.
What I said I would rather do
See, I would rather word substitute and say a different word, a word that I can maybe say without blocking instead of blocking on a word and forcing it out.
That is behind my preference for another word. I want to express myself and get my thought out. In that explanation, I was clear about the choice I preferred.
I've stated an exception: a true emergency when I had to tell authorities something. I've also said that some situations require my real name, and that I may have to say a particular word for a doctor. A name used to call out a coffee order is a choice I have discussed separately.