Three Ways To Advertise Your Stutter
HAPPY INTERNATIONAL STUTTERING AWARENESS DAY!
How are you celebrating your stutter? Or, are you celebrating someone close to you that stutters? I’m pitching in by writing this blog post and doing some extra reflection on what it means to identify as a person who stutters. If you asked me a few years ago if I would ever publicly announce myself as someone who stutters, I would’ve said you’re absolutely insane because that would NEVER happen. But, sometimes the things we never expect to happen to us sometimes do actually happen to us. I’ve been in avoidance reduction therapy for stuttering (ARTS) for a while now, and the number one reason I love it is because of the confidence it gives you. You’re taught to celebrate big, open stutters instead of holding back and feeling ashamed. You’re also taught that it’s OK to tell people that you stutter. Being able to say “yeah, I’m comfortable with my stutter” is a MAJOR milestone in a PWS’s life. But if you’re not quite there yet, how do you get there? In today’s blog post, I’m covering three ways to organically advertise your stutter. Let’s begin!
Related: International Stuttering Awareness Day
You go to speech therapy
Telling someone you attend speech therapy is a great way to preface to the phrase “I’m a person who stutters.” I use this approach a lot. It’s so easy to slip it in when you’re in a conversation with someone about your after work plans, what you did the week before, or what you have coming up next week. It also invites the follow up “what for?” question, which gives you the opportune moment to naturally advertise that you’re a person who stutters. Sometimes I’ll also phrase it like “I have to drive to University of Maryland (where my speech therapy is held) tonight. I attend speech therapy there because I’m a person who stutters.” Several other people I know have phrased it like this and have said it feels really natural!
You mention you stutter during a relevant conversation topic
This is another great tactic that I like to use. I find that a lot of the time, I can turn the conversation towards a topic that involves speech, which leads to a great opportunity to mention that I stutter. If I’m talking about my job, I might mention that it involves lots of communication and making presentations and such, which can sometimes be scary because I stutter. If I’m talking about my hobbies, I usually mention this blog and my stutter. I also talk about general life experiences I’ve had that came from stuttering, such as a really emotional story, a funny story, or a life-changing experience. If you spend a few minutes thinking about the topics you most often bring up during small talk, you can find tons of ways to integrate speech and stuttering into it. Give it a try!
Related: Stuttering at Work
Make it funny
Telling a funny story is a light and easy way to mention stuttering without making it awkward. I have TONS of stories from my own stuttering experiences, as well as a few that I’ve heard from other people that make everyone, stutterer or not, laugh. I like to joke about my own stutter because it reminds me not to take life too seriously, and that there’s worse detriments to have than a stutter. If you google Drew Lynch or Nina G (Author of Stutterer Interrupted, The Comedian Who Almost Didn’t Happen), you’ll find some pretty hilarious one liners about stuttering. I think it’s fun to switch up your advertising tactics and sometimes make it more playful so others can see your sense of humor!
I hope this post gave you some fresh ideas on how to advertise your stutter. One of the most common questions I see people asking is, “how do I tell people that I stutter?”. And I get it, it’s hard! However you choose to advertise your stutter is your decision. My goal for this blog post was to provide a couple examples on how I like to advertise my stutter so others could test them out. If you’ve advertised your stutter to new people, how do you like to do it? Do you use any of the methods I mentioned here? I’d love to know!
