Living life with a stutter - today my name is…….

When I tell people I have a stutter they say how they hadn’t noticed, a lot of this is thanks to neuro-linguistic programming, it helped me so much and this is something I will go into a bit more detail on another day. It is very kind of them to say they hadn’t noticed or how well I manage it but it wasn’t always like this.

Let me cast my mind back to my school days and remember the times in lessons when the teacher is deciding who is going to be next to read from the book. My mind is telling me over and over again ‘she is going to pick you’ and I am filled with dread, almost like my insides are twisting up. I know if she comes to me I will clam up, do that funny breathing thing through my nose and catch the right breathe to blurt the first word out whilst everybody else is laughing or smiling sympathetically. Somebody may whisper something to the person next to them which you assume will be something horrible. This is what it is like to have a stutter……for some of us.

Each stutter is different and personal to the person, mine was more of a block and one of the first things I realised I couldn’t say was my name! I used to dread what I called the ‘circle of death’ where we had to introduce ourselves, my tactic was to make my apologies and leave to go to the bathroom! If I went for a takeaway coffee and they asked me my name I often made up a name that I could say! They must have been so confused as one day I was John and the next day I was Phil!

So what has this got to do with mental health? Well as a child who couldn’t talk fluently my focus was always on getting my words out, not necessarily on what words were coming out! I avoided situations where I should have thrived and this may have been a factor in a major lack of confidence. The self doubt brought me to my knees, I had the most brilliant ideas and wanted to help so much but it seemed everyone else had more confidence in their own ideas so I always went with there’s, I used to get so frustrated with myself! Nobody would have known it though, anybody looking from the outside in thought I was confident, always smiling, telling jokes etc but inside I had zero confidence. This has stayed with me throughout my life and even now, whether it is in work or stood on the start line of a race I look around and think everyone else is better.

In my world I class this is poor mental health, I don’t have a diagnosis of anything but find myself having periods of time where my self confidence is very low. I have way of overcoming this, sometimes it can take a bit of time but I get there. If you see/hear somebody who is struggling, be kind and be patient.