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10-29-2006, 03:32 PM
I don't really know if this will help you, but this worked for me.
The first time I stuttered was when I was ten years old. I was reading aloud in class just fine, rattling along the story and then just as if somebody had clicked their fingers and I was hypnotised, I couldn't say the words anymore, I was repeating the hard consonant sounds and struggling to get past them to say the words. I couldn't understand what was happening.
That never happened again until I was 15 and it suddenly hit me again, unexpectedly. I had a terrible stutter starting at age 15. It affected me badly. Sometimes I couldn't speak at all, I'd be avoiding words with certain letters. I was in fear of starting to speak because I couldn't get my words out. I never knew if I'd be able to say a sentence without stumbling.
It was that fear thing that got me. I'd be so conscious of myself, what I was saying, whether a certain word starting with a certain letter was coming up and that would make me worse. I was scared to speak. I found that if I was offering information, I was worse.
Often I would just make a struggling sound if I tried to speak and give up. It was very frustrating and very isolating. I went into my shell a lot. It was embarrassing, humiliating and lonely and not good for my self-esteem. When people were patient seemed to make me even worse. Somebody asked me for directions once and I must have taken 5 minutes to say what could be said in 30 seconds. I felt like an idiot. In class I might know the answer but couldn't say.
I have seen here that some people have talked about being able to sing but not speak. I realised I could do this, but I'm tone deaf. I wouldn't sing in public even now although I have done stage plays, acting exams and public speaking is no problem. It isn't something I think about. So don't think you can't overcome your stutter and do these things either.
I found I could sing (on my own) and mouth and throat was more relaxed. My vocal instruments weren't clamping up but were projecting outwards. It didn't have to be a particular song. I have a very poor musical memory, so I really don't remember more than a line or two from any songs, even if I have heard those favourite songs of mine a hundred times. But if I sang my words I could say them. I would sing whatever words came into my head in a gentle relaxed flowing melody.
That was my starting point and from that I tried to see if I could sing so slightly as I spoke people wouldn't really notice I was singing - a sort of sing/speak, like in musicals like Evita, when they link songs by singing the lines, but diluted. What I found in trying that, still on my own, was that I was creating a new speech pattern, a new rhythm in my voice. A lot of us speak in a perceptable regular rhythm, our patterns of stress and intonation and I was recreating that in my voice.
Trying to imitate a celebrity who has a distinctive and obvious pattern, or reading a metered poem, or singing, all worked for me. I realised if I changed the way I spoke, the pattern in my voice, my stutter would go away completely. If I did a silly voice or accent the stutter would also go.
It wasn't quite singing, that I used to speak, but it was speaking with the best ryhthm that suited me in a more relaxed way. Maybe there was a little tune there too and over a sentence the pitch might just go up very gradually and then down a few times, depending on its length. I used my hands more and still do, and my right hand seems to move in small circles as I speak, in that rhythm.
Also I would no longer be waiting and listening out for that difficult word in the sentence, I would be listening to the pattern in my voice as I spoke a sentence. I could hear my voice better it seemed, because I could hear the pattern. The pattern was more important to think about than that word. This was an INSTANT transformation for me. Sometimes for years I would still struggle with that first word, but I would think of what I was going to say and "sing" it. I lost some sponteanity, but it was better than not speaking because of my stutter. I believe nobody ever noticed I was singing. It was no more singing than the speech patterns that many people use, but it changed my life, just by changing my voice.
If you stutter, but find you can sing or imitate somebody, or do an accent, please try this. Please reply and let me know what happens or if you have any questions.
The first time I stuttered was when I was ten years old. I was reading aloud in class just fine, rattling along the story and then just as if somebody had clicked their fingers and I was hypnotised, I couldn't say the words anymore, I was repeating the hard consonant sounds and struggling to get past them to say the words. I couldn't understand what was happening.
That never happened again until I was 15 and it suddenly hit me again, unexpectedly. I had a terrible stutter starting at age 15. It affected me badly. Sometimes I couldn't speak at all, I'd be avoiding words with certain letters. I was in fear of starting to speak because I couldn't get my words out. I never knew if I'd be able to say a sentence without stumbling.
It was that fear thing that got me. I'd be so conscious of myself, what I was saying, whether a certain word starting with a certain letter was coming up and that would make me worse. I was scared to speak. I found that if I was offering information, I was worse.
Often I would just make a struggling sound if I tried to speak and give up. It was very frustrating and very isolating. I went into my shell a lot. It was embarrassing, humiliating and lonely and not good for my self-esteem. When people were patient seemed to make me even worse. Somebody asked me for directions once and I must have taken 5 minutes to say what could be said in 30 seconds. I felt like an idiot. In class I might know the answer but couldn't say.
I have seen here that some people have talked about being able to sing but not speak. I realised I could do this, but I'm tone deaf. I wouldn't sing in public even now although I have done stage plays, acting exams and public speaking is no problem. It isn't something I think about. So don't think you can't overcome your stutter and do these things either.
I found I could sing (on my own) and mouth and throat was more relaxed. My vocal instruments weren't clamping up but were projecting outwards. It didn't have to be a particular song. I have a very poor musical memory, so I really don't remember more than a line or two from any songs, even if I have heard those favourite songs of mine a hundred times. But if I sang my words I could say them. I would sing whatever words came into my head in a gentle relaxed flowing melody.
That was my starting point and from that I tried to see if I could sing so slightly as I spoke people wouldn't really notice I was singing - a sort of sing/speak, like in musicals like Evita, when they link songs by singing the lines, but diluted. What I found in trying that, still on my own, was that I was creating a new speech pattern, a new rhythm in my voice. A lot of us speak in a perceptable regular rhythm, our patterns of stress and intonation and I was recreating that in my voice.
Trying to imitate a celebrity who has a distinctive and obvious pattern, or reading a metered poem, or singing, all worked for me. I realised if I changed the way I spoke, the pattern in my voice, my stutter would go away completely. If I did a silly voice or accent the stutter would also go.
It wasn't quite singing, that I used to speak, but it was speaking with the best ryhthm that suited me in a more relaxed way. Maybe there was a little tune there too and over a sentence the pitch might just go up very gradually and then down a few times, depending on its length. I used my hands more and still do, and my right hand seems to move in small circles as I speak, in that rhythm.
Also I would no longer be waiting and listening out for that difficult word in the sentence, I would be listening to the pattern in my voice as I spoke a sentence. I could hear my voice better it seemed, because I could hear the pattern. The pattern was more important to think about than that word. This was an INSTANT transformation for me. Sometimes for years I would still struggle with that first word, but I would think of what I was going to say and "sing" it. I lost some sponteanity, but it was better than not speaking because of my stutter. I believe nobody ever noticed I was singing. It was no more singing than the speech patterns that many people use, but it changed my life, just by changing my voice.
If you stutter, but find you can sing or imitate somebody, or do an accent, please try this. Please reply and let me know what happens or if you have any questions.