I went to my annual stuttering convention last month. That’s right, a stuttering… convention: the annual conference of the National Stuttering Association in Fort Worth, Texas. Stuttering was a problem when I was younger but is not a significant issue in my personal life today, thanks in part to conferences like these.
Stuttering is mostly neurological in origin and often genetic. (Short answer: Our brains process speech less efficiently.) Folks used to think it was psychological because it comes with a lot of emotional baggage: fear of speaking, guilt and shame. Stuttering still is widely misunderstood, and at times seems to be the only disability it’s still okay to ridicule.
People have been trying to fix stuttering for years but there’s no cure. Traditional speech therapy addresses only the behavioral part of stuttering by changing the way you speak. That doesn’t work for most people: Imagine never uttering a spontaneous syllable. As a result many people who stutter have given up on speech therapy, and there’s a booming business in alternative treatments such as assistive devices that don’t work particularly well either.
What does work for most people is therapy that changes your attitudes toward stuttering in addition to helping you speak more smoothly. Some speech-language pathologists specialize in this kind of therapy but – because stuttering affects only one percent of the population –experts are hard to find. I was lucky enough to stumble across this kind of therapy years ago but most stutterers, especially kids in school, still get the old-fashioned, mostly ineffective kind.
Changing your attitude toward stuttering amounts to a cognitive makeover: walking away from familiar beliefs, letting go of lifelong fear and shame, bringing your stuttering out in the open and accepting that it’s okay to stutter. That’s counterintuitive and downright scary when you’ve spent your life trying your damndest not to stutter.
That’s where the stuttering convention comes in. If you’ve grown up in silent shame and never talked with another stutterer about stuttering, imagine being in a place where stuttering is normal. With more than 800 people, the Fort Worth conference was like spending three days on Planet Stuttering. Some of us stutter a little, some stutter a lot and everyone speaks freely. There are workshops and social activities, but mostly we talk. And talk.
The conference changes the rules about stuttering and opens unimagined possibilities. There are people who are good communicators in spite of their stuttering, people who are succeeding in every career you can imagine, people who have the incredible courage to get up and speak in front of a group for the very first time. And amazing children who have reached levels of self-acceptance I did not attain until middle age.
A lightbulb moment at my first stuttering conference was hearing a presenter who stuttered. I had always assumed that fluent speech was a prerequisite for public speaking and was dumbfounded when this guy stuttered through his presentation, got his point across and drew applause. Finally it occurred to me: I can do that. And I have.
For people struggling to come to terms with stuttering, three days of immersion in stuttering acceptance is a paradigm-shifting catalyst for change. The experience also forges a deep bond among attendees and many come back year after year.
I attend every conference, not just because I’m on the National Stuttering Association’s board but because I enjoy reconnecting with friends and charging my batteries. The parties are pretty good, too.