I am Person Who Stutters (PWS)

Hello all,

My name is Christine Dits and I am a Person Who Stutters (PWS). It has been a while since I last posted in this blog. But I am back! I recently returned from the National Stuttering Association (NSA) conference held in Fort Worth, Texas this year. This was my second conference and I had a great time! I met a lot of new people who stutter and reunited with old friends who stuttered. I went to some really good workshops and even had the wonderful opportunity to hear David Seidler, the screenwrite of The King's Speech, speak at the keynote presentation. Now that I am back home I miss my stutter buddies tremendously. I would go back in a heartbeat! I want the next convention, held in Florida, to come fast! But I have to wait another year. That is okay, because I plan on staying in touch with all the PWS from the conference.

This blog post will be short, because at the moment I do not have a whole lot to say, but I would like to just inform you all on stuttering in general, since there are many people out there who do not know a whole lot about stuttering. Stuttering is a sort of enigma.

Stuttering is a communicative disorder and disability. It affects about 1% of the population. There is no known cure for stuttering, nor is there a known cause. However, recent research shows that stuttering is genetic in 9% of the population of people who stutter. There are some medications that have researched for stuttering that will hopefully help those who stutter become more fluent. In addition, a side note, for every 4 males who stutter, there is 1 female who stutters.

There are many different types of stuttering. A stutter can also be referred to as a block. A block happens when one silently stutters on a sound, or the sound is just caught in their throat or on their tongue, and they cannot produce the sound. A stutter is more overt and can be heard. People who stutter can have mild, moderate or severe stutters. I personally have a mild to moderate stutter. But more on the mild side I would say. My stutter takes on the form of repeating the beginnings of words, blocking on certain sounds from time to time, and getting stuck in the middle of a word, but finally pushing through it. Some people show visual signs of stuttering, in addition to their stuttered speech, which are called secondary characteristics. So, people may scrunch up their face, produce a sort of tremor on their lips and mouth, sound like they are out of breath, which they usually are, or jerk their heads up or to the side. Some people also are barely intelligible; I have only met two people who could barely get ANY word or sound out or who just stumbled on all their words and were not understood at all. I have a lot of sympathy for those people, but they are also very courageous to even attempt to speak at all.

And I will just end by giving some tips to those who are fluent, do not stutter, when talking to those who do stutter. First, don't assume that we are nervous, we are not. Do not tell us to slow down, take a breath, or start over. You can ask us to repeat what we said, but that is also hard for us as well. Understand that we become emotionally exhausted at the end of the day by all the thinking of words to avoid and how to speak and by just speaking in general. In my opinion, stuttering is also a very psychosocial disorder. I know there are other theories as to what area or part of the body or mind causes stuttering, but in my experience, I believe stuttering can be rather psychological. In high school, I had rather low self-esteem and suffered from anxiety and depression, which worsened my stutter. Once I was able to gain more confidence, mature, and get a hold of my rampant emotions, as well as change my thinking and perspective on stuttering, I became more fluent. In addition, it is VERY important for a PWS to accept their stuttering and not let it define who they are. This often takes a long time to do. They say that the first step to recover is acceptance.

Well, it looks like this blog was not short after all. Ha!

I hope you all learned something from this post and I hope to hear your comments on this issue. Or any experiences you have had with stuttering.

Until next time, ...

Proud Stutterer,
  Christine