Stuttering and the phone

[daneo]

Hey everyone I am new to these forums. Im 24 and I have been a stutterer for as long as I can remember. My stuttering is not that bad I think as I am mostly fluent when talking to people face to face. However, I have BIG problems when talking to people on the PHONE.

This is my major setback as a stutterer. I tend to avoid the phone as much as possible. Whenever I answer it I get very anxious. I think it has to do with the non face-to-face interaction.

Does anybody have any tips to help with stuttering on the phone? Any help is appreciated

[Perad]

When recieving a call don't be nervous, just remember they are phoning so they will be making the conversation and doing most of the talking.

Next drill it into your head "whats the worst that can happen?"

Finally focus on saying hello, you can even start saying it before you pick the phone. Hello is the key word on the phone, it signifies that you are a person with at least a tiny bit of intelligence and not a robot, animal or frenchy.

If you get out hello ok you are past the worse part

[Mash]

When recieving phone calls I'm usually stutter free.

The time I cant get a dam word out of my mouth is when I have to call up the power, phone or cable company. I get mischarged are want to change a feature and I loose it on the phone.

Instead of having a 2 mintutes conversation to fix a problem it turns into 10 mintues becuase I cant any words out of my mouth.

[lupes]

Hey everyone I am new to these forums. Im 24 and I have been a stutterer for as long as I can remember. My stuttering is not that bad I think as I am mostly fluent when talking to people face to face. However, I have BIG problems when talking to people on the PHONE.

This is my major setback as a stutterer. I tend to avoid the phone as much as possible. Whenever I answer it I get very anxious. I think it has to do with the non face-to-face interaction.

Does anybody have any tips to help with stuttering on the phone? Any help is appreciated

Yeh i hardly stutter when i talk usually either.

But ofcourse its a different matter on the phone.

the best thing - for me anyway, is just to pick the phone up as quickly as possible without thinking about it.

The longer u wait, the more u'll worry about it, and the more anxious u'll be, hence more likely to stutter.

[tdk]

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[bignick]

Firstly welcome to the forum.

I used to have problems on the phone, but my jobs changed and the more I used it the better I got, of course I still had (and have) bad times on the phone but now I dont even think to myself that oh god the phone is ringing I am going to stutter. As Lupes said, answer the phone quickly and dont start to think about stuttering.

Nick

[Standingtall]

I'm the same way like BigNick, I use to hate to use the phone, but my job required me to use the phone a lot and now I don't even think about it anymore. As I sit here writing this my phone may ring and without missing a beat, I can pick it up and say hello and start talking. I still have the odd time I have the bad call. Can't even say hello.

[CurlyGirly]

I have to both make and answer phone calls at work and it is definitly the area that I stutter in the most. I will take the idea of answering it fast on board, altho i find that hard because I have to remember what to say when I answer it, according to whether it is internal or external. And i'll try and pretend that everyone is a good old friend of mine :)

[Standingtall]

I have to both make and answer phone calls at work and it is definitly the area that I stutter in the most. I will take the idea of answering it fast on board, altho i find that hard because I have to remember what to say when I answer it, according to whether it is internal or external. And i'll try and pretend that everyone is a good old friend of mine :)
Don't forget they can't see you, so you can get up and walk around, within cord distance of course, or move the phone away from your mouth as you struggle. I make all the faces I can or move my hands around. Well that is what I do. Unless you work in a cubicle and then you can just make as many faces and hand jestures as you can to get your through. After a while you won't need to do that.

[Hattitude]

I used to hate speaking on the phone. In fact I had such a horrible experience with an operator that I couldn't talk on the phone for 2 months. The operator was very rude and said something along the lines of "why can't you talk properly? Are you stupid?" I was not rude to her and felt horrible afterwards.
My therapist (who I started seeing shortly afterwards) helped me through this period. I came to accept my stutter, and eventually started talking on the phone again.
I still don't enjoy talking to strangers on the phone, but I've found that concentrating on the topic or conversation really helps reduce my stutter.

[Jeff99]

ok we have differnet view on this i let the phoine ring a few times take a deep breath and answer the phone at the top of my breath and exhale and speak at the same time something i learnt in the Mcguire program i never have trouble on the phone since using this techquie.