Stuttering and Trauma

What is Trauma?

"Traumatic events are those occurrences that challenge and overwhelm our capacity to cope and respond, causing our body/mind to be stuck in survival mode, leaving us unable to recover our equilibrium." ― Gina Ross, Beyond the Trauma Vortex into the Healing Vortex

Gina Ross explains further that, while most people might think of trauma as resulting from a specific traumatic event that is "shattering and extraordinary," traumatic events can also be ordinary occurrences which have an accumulative effect on our bodies and minds. Trauma manifests as a lasting emotional response to incidents that "overwhelm our capacity to cope and respond."

Explicit and Implicit Traumatic Events

The experience of stuttering is a traumatic experience for many of us who stutter. There are explicit and implicit events that contribute to our trauma.

Explicit events are those where we experience abuse from others specifically due to our stuttering. These events include bullying at school, physical and verbal abuse at home from those who are meant to keep us safe, rejection by peers and by figures of authority, and overt expressions of impatience and ridicule.

Implicit events are events where we experience fear due to our stuttering and include our own interpretations of the event. We experience micro-traumatic stress whenever we experience the fear and shame associated with the experience of stuttering. It might be when we see a look of disappointment or tragedy on the face of a parent, a look of incomprehension or even revolt on the face of a colleague, or when we face impatience from others. Often people make comments such as "it's ok" or "slow down," or they complete our words for us. While these behaviors are, I believe, mostly done with good intentions, they are, in their accumulation, traumatic, since they reinforce our belief that we are damaged, that we are not good enough.

Traumatic Experiences in the Stuttering Block

Within the experience of the stuttering block there are a few aspects that are traumatizing. There is anticipatory anxiety, of course. When repeated often enough we experience trauma even when we think about speaking. Secondly, the stuttering block often seems to last for a very long time – even seconds feels like eternity – and we seldom know whether or when we will get out of the block. Thirdly, as we block, we experience great anxiety that we will not be able to speak before someone finishes our words for us. Lastly, after finishing our words for us, the conversation is quickly moved on and we are left behind, still trying to speak, and feeling abandoned. I have often experienced all this in work meetings.

The sense of abandonment that sometimes accompanies the experience of stuttering must not be underestimated. Sometimes the abandonment is explicit, as when the listener simply turns away from us and leaves. Other times, the conversation carries on without us as we are blocking. When people ignore what we say since they feel discomfort when we stutter, this, too, is felt as abandonment. Abandonment is a very deep traumatic experience, and it intensifies the shame.

Saying Our Name

Significant traumatic events are related to us being called upon to say our name. It is well known that people who stutter have difficulty saying their own name. I won't go into the possible reasons for that here but suffice it to say that when asked your name and you are unable to respond, it is a mightily traumatic event. This event happens frequently: every time we are in a new class, a new extracurricular activity, and even when we meet or want to meet someone new, we are called upon to say our name. And we get stuck.

Some people who stutter might change their names, and others might choose to avoid situations where they have to say their names. And then there are the folks who, when you block on your name ask you "Have you forgotten your name?" Maybe they are reacting automatically from their own sense of unease, and maybe they are simply arrogant.

Conclusion

The point is that trauma is inherent in the experience of stuttering, and, like shame and fear, the trauma needs to be acknowledged and addressed. There are affective, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of the experience of stuttering, and trauma is right there in that mix affecting our emotions, our behaviors, and our thoughts and beliefs. We need to acknowledge that we might feel shame for feeling traumatized, and then move on to getting the help that we need, whether from mental health professionals, from speech and language professions who have invested in understanding the trauma, or from colleagues in the self-help world. We need to acknowledge the trauma.

More information on stuttering can be found in my book:

Stuttering: From Shame and Anxiety to Confident Authenticity

Information on the book and where to buy it on Amazon can be found here:

https://onstuttering.com/

Information on the book in Hebrew can be found here:

https://onstuttering.com/hebrew/