Author: Ciaran Brennan

Looking back now, I can see that my story is not unique, but as a child, I felt particularly hard done by and singled out for especially cruel and never-ending punishment. I developed my stutter when I was probably 7 or 8 years old. My father and two brothers had a stutter too. So when I wasn’t stuttering myself, I was constantly reminded of the pain and shame of stuttering.

For me, stuttering flooded me with shame – and that’s something that I am still dealing with today in my forties. My stutter wasn’t especially bad, I could get through some conversations without stuttering. But that was almost worse in some ways, as I developed a strong motivation to hide my stutter from everyone. It might have been easier if my stutter was worse and attempts to hide it were totally futile. But for me, it was bad enough to really get me down, but not so bad that I could see potential to get away with hiding it. So that became my childhood life strategy – I started to anxiously scan for future occasions where I might get “found out” – avoid answering the house phone, never put your hand up in class, avoid meeting new people where I might have to tell them my name, the list was endless. When I was in a conversation, I was constantly scanning ahead for certain words that might trip me up, and coming up with 3-4 alternatives for all those potential words that just might come up. The cognitive load on my brain must have been in overdrive at all times.

School was one of the worst experiences for me. Every day, I would scan my upcoming classes, trying to predict which teacher might get us to read from the textbook. Reading was the worst because there was no room to use alternative words that gave the same meaning. I could get away with some of that if a teacher called on me to answer a question (often by pretending that I didn’t know the answer or replacing tricky words with easier-to-say alternatives). But with the teacher and 30 students all looking at the same text that I’m attempting to read out loud – there was no escape. As soon as a teacher started to ask a student to read a passage, my brain kicked in to predict how long before it came to my turn. Would we have finished the chapter before it came to me? How much time is left before the bell? Could I strategically plan a bathroom break at the right moment? When it became clear that I couldn’t escape, my stomach drop, a ball of heat forms in my stomach, my face reddens, my futile attempts to appear calm and collected when inside my whole system is on high alert. Cortisol coursing through my veins. My breathing gets shallower. By the time my turn comes around, I’m a hot mess inside. There’s no wonder I stumbled over words. When I inevitably did stutter over a word, the wave of pain that flooded over me was almost unbearable. My “secret” was out, there was no escaping it. I waited eagerly for a reaction. Would the teacher say something, would people laugh? What would my friends say to me after class? It was almost too much to bear. But nobody said anything. Not my teacher, not the resident bully always on the lookout for a sign of weakness to exploit, not my friends. Silence. I started to wonder if what I had sounded like was so bad that it went beyond the point of bullying material. I was initially grateful that my friends never mentioned it after class as it avoided having to talk about it. I was certainly not going to bring it up.

But looking back, I can see now that the silence left the door open for shame to flood in. Was my affliction so bad that nobody could even bring it up? Was it that horrible that it could not be spoken of? The silence went on for years, creating a vacuum that shame was only too eager to fill. My brothers that stuttered never spoke to me about it – we never shared our pain and frustration together. My father never took me aside and told me he understood what I was going through. My sisters never inquired if I was doing ok with it all. My mother never asked how I was coping with it. She never asked if I wanted to get help with it all. She never told me that it was ok if I stuttered, that I was still loved, that it didn’t matter, that I could let people know that I stuttered and that was ok.

This built a shame monster inside me, convincing me that I was less-than, that people shouldn’t have to put up with my inability to verbalize my thoughts, that I had to just get on with things, stuff down my emotions, pretend everything was fine, that I was happy, but inside I wasn’t happy. I was embarrassed and ashamed. I felt guilty that I couldn’t perform a simple human task that everybody else could do. I was angry at myself for being such a failure. I had myself completely convinced that I could never have a future – how could somebody like me get to live a full life, it just wasn’t possible. I was angry that my parents didn’t talk to me about it, they didn’t give me any comfort in my pain. Couldn’t they see that I was breaking inside?

But my story doesn’t end there. There was a future for me and I’m living it now! In my twenties, I finally plucked up the courage to seek professional help. Through many sessions, which turned into more psychological therapy than physical speech therapy, I learned to gain some confidence in my abilities to speak. My stutter lessened and I started to become less scared of speaking. Despite having modeled the earlier part of my career around roles that limited my speaking requirements as much as possible, I started to take on roles that required me to speak more. As my confidence grew, my stuttering lessened further. It was always there in my mind, I could sense that it was always waiting to pounce on me in a moment of weakness. But I had tamed the monster to a certain degree. When I was rested and confident, I could quieten the inner voice that was always there. As the years went by, I’ve had more speech therapy and my speaking has continued to improve. I don’t know if stuttering will ever completely leave me, but the amount of times that I stutter now is less than a handful per month, less sometimes. It’s under control and now I’m ready to start improving my fluency of speech and maybe someday become a good public speaker. I’ve given speeches at my wedding and my brother’s wedding. I’ve moved into a job where the entire role revolves around speaking. I manage client accounts and teams of people. I run critical sales presentations and have spoken at industry events. I’ve tamed the monster.

What’s next for me is the feeling of shame. The shame influenced my behavior and actions for so long. I still carry it around on my back, but I’m finally starting to recognize that it is on my back. My eyes are starting to open to the weight I’ve been carrying around and my mind is starting to think, maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to carry around this burden any longer. I’m telling my 10-year-old self that it wasn’t my fault that I stuttered. That it was not shameful, but just a burden that millions of others have to go through too. That people don’t really care that much if you stutter. That it is not so terrible to stumble over some words. That I’m ok. That I’m normal. That I’m an individual that people do want to hear from, that I have a voice and feelings, that I can be loved. That I deserve to be loved.