Do you stutter?

I don't have a stammer but i do tend to get a block mid-sentence and i'd have to start talking gibberish and start over again. i laugh it off and most people find it funny.

I read a comment saying that some people find that the person they're talking to gets embarrassed if you start to stammer around them, I think that's true sometimes. I know if someone starts stammering around me and can't get by that one particular word it tends to get awkward. I really don't mean for it to get that way! I would just be wondering should i finish the sentence for them or wait for them to get over it! And i really never know what to do so i keep my mouth shut and try to make it seem like it isn't awkward and make it worse! Then i think i'd just try to laugh it off.

So.. How would you want people to react if you start stammering? Should they finish the sentence or leave you to get over it?

i used to have a lecturer in college who had a stammer - i thought standing up stammering in front of 300 people must be pretty awful but she seemed to take it in stride. she used to say it'd give us more time to take down notes. i thought it was really cool that someone could be that successful in a job that involves a lot of public speaking, she was a really good lecturer and all.

Hi, a newbie here!

I've been reading through this thread and find it really interesting. I developed a stammer around the age of 7, ironically due to attending speech therapy for pronouncing the 'sh' sound incorrectly (go figure eh?!). I'm pretty sure what happened is that I became very conscious of the way I spoke and the stammer seemed to develop since then.

I'm now 28 and over the years I've had times speaking completely fluently (months at a time) only to relapse gradually. This has convinced me that my stammer is completely phychological, in other words its 'all my head'. A feeling rather than a situation triggers it, depending on a lot of factors going on in my life at the time, somehow I've related certain feelings or emotions to trigger my stammer and at times I've been able to bypass these feelings or emotions completely leading to fluent speech which would explain why I rarely, if ever stammer after having a few drinks.

I've also attended the McGuire Program and it's definately something that works for some people and doesn't work for others. By the way, they in no way claim it to be a cure and deal alot with accepting the stammer while also concentraing on the 'costal/diaphragm' breathing method. Its all about how much work you're willing to put into the course and you're recovery from stammering where eventually you're trying to be in control of your stammer rather than the stammer being in control. It has worked for me in the past but I relapsed badly at one point due to a lot of factors, not least, me getting very lazy. It works on the basis of overkilling feared words and situations. I've attended more courses and meetings since and am building up my fluency again.

Anyway, this is something I could hammer on about all day so I'll leave it at that. I don't think anyone can dismiss anything unless they've tried it, as people are different and somethings will work for you, somethings won't. The McGuire Program is expensive for the 4 day intensive course but like a lot of things you'll only get out of it, what you put in and for a lot of people it seems to be the best money they ever spent, for others, maybe not

P

I always thought that stammering and stuttering were actually slightly different.

Yeah I had a bad stammer when I was younger, thankfully it's effectively gone now, still comes through now and again but doesn't bother me. Like a previous poster said, a friend in primary school had a bad stammer and I used to laugh my head off at him everyday, poetic irony is of course he got better and I developed a problem. I'm friends with him for the last 16 years so I don't really feel all that guilty about mocking him anymore, he's fine now anyway.

More troublingly, my 9 year old sister has developed a stammer which seems to be getting slightly worse. I felt awfully guilty about this and blamed myself but my speech was constantly getting better and it didn't rub off on her. My mother said she more than likely began stammering because of her friend next door who has it. I don't know whether it's a good thing that she's a girl, seeing as it is so much more occurant in males (as someone pointed out) than females, but of course young boys would be so much more cruel about it.

With regards to how one feels with a stammer as someone asked, you cannot begin to imagine the fear and panic that kicks in merely from having to ask for something in a shop because of a stammer. Long queues are the worst, sh*tting yourself at the back knowing your going to stammer, then every step you move forward makes your heart beat faster and your tongue get tighter until eventually the moment of humiliation arrives and you walk away (after a battle trying to spit out a few words) feeling so inadequate you just want to die. That's what it feels like.

Now I give presentations in college with no problems. Living in France at the moment and while I'm sometimes nervous speaking the language, I don't let it affect me. There's hope no matter how bad the condition is