Do We Need to Struggle to Stutter?

Apr 22

Does our current approach to stuttering put too much emphasis on shame and struggle?

I hear fellow people who stutter say, upon making peace with their stutter, “I don’t really stutter anymore.” And yet - the repetitions, prolongations, and blocks still exist. Perhaps the frequency has decreased, but they aren’t saying that. They’re saying they don’t stutter anymore. Except they do!

What do they mean?!

What they mean is that they no longer struggle.

But that isn’t what they say. As someone who still stutters but hardly ever struggles anymore, this feels frustrating to me. Have we (people who stutter) been so conditioned to believe that stuttering must include mental exhaustion, shame, and struggle?

Is it possible to stutter without much of a struggle? Does that erase the stuttering experience entirely? And how did shame become so tied to stuttering that it seems impossible to separate it?

Damage of this confusion - Wendell Johnson

This emotion (stuttering = struggling) has existed for god-knows-how-long. One of the most damning results if this confusion came out of the 1939 unpublished “Monster Study”, performed by Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor. I did a two-parter podcast episode about this infamous study that traumatized some orphans for life.

In short, if you haven’t listened, Johnson discovers “General Semantics”, a theory that isn’t too dissimiliar to “The Secret”. As a young man, Johnson had to have an emergency appendicitis and was left with just a book about General Semantics to read as he recovered. In his own words, he read these theories, thought about how it applied to his own stutter, and was “never the same since”.

Johnson’s theory became that if you tell a child that they are a stutterer, then they will continue to stutter. If you do not, then they will cease to stutter. This led to him performing an experiment on orphans - which in and of itself was not unusual in 1939, but the content of the study was pretty bizarre to read.

In my opinion, what Johnson discovered was that you can create the rest of the iceberg without a stutter, if you shame children about the way they speak enough. But why would him and Tudor say such awful things to children? Well, for one, childhood trauma was not known the way it is now. But also, Johnson was convinced this was the cure. Despite this failing of an experiment, he continued to preach this idea - blaming mothers for calling their children stutterers. His theories took hold, and many became afraid to use the word “stutter”.

I say all of this for a reason: Johnson believed he was right. Why? Because it worked for him. Wait - by all accounts, Johnson continued to stutter after this. But everyone noted that a major shift happened inside of him when he no longer ‘identified’ himself as a stutterer in the same way.

Because as an adult, Johnson had immense shame around his speech. He had tried every experiment people threw at him, and he continued to stutter. The idea in general semantics freed him - let go of this identity, and you will let go of your…

Johnson thought “stutter”. I’d say it was “struggle”.

I believe that what happened was Wendell Johnson finally began to let go of the shame he held, and the way he saw his own speech as “less than”. This was transformative.

He did still continue to stutter, but he struggled less. His confidence grew, and his naturally charismatic personality came out again. In his own eyes, he was less of a stutterer. So of course this should work for kids, right? It was wildly effective for him. It changed his life. It freed him. He was hardly a stutterer anymore! The reason the few stammers remained, he could blame on not getting this message early enough as a kid. So how can he save as many people as possible from his own fate of his teens and 20s? Prove it.

Oof.

But back then, we didn’t have a name for this difference. Others would not have understood what Johnson was feeling, and Johnson would not have necessarily known that stuttering could exist with less struggle.

Enter the “Stuttering Iceberg” in 1970

The “Stuttering as an iceberg” metaphor is a very popular way to explain the way stuttering impacts many people who stutter. It was created in 1970 by Joseph Sheehan, and I won’t waste time discussing it here. If you aren’t familiar, you can also check out this post by American Institute for Stuttering or this excellent post by Courtney Margulis, and it has been a huge deal in teaching speech therapists how stuttering impacts us. I also discuss this more in a podcast episode I made, where I did my best to explain the iceberg to parents.

The whole idea is that most of stuttering is what is under the surface: shame, regret, isolation, anxiety, denial. Lots of negative emotions, right?

All right, here’s my possibly-controverisal-opinion:

Is the shame and struggle of “The Iceberg” truly necessary for the experience of stuttering?

I’m not the first to suggest something about this is deeply lacking. Nina G, comedian and disability advocate, gave the stuttering iceberg a makeover in 2014 to show the good things that can exist with stuttering. In 2005, Russ Hicks proposed an Iceberg Matrix that captures the ups and downs of how stuttering can feel, showing the change between fear and fearlessness as variable.

The point both of them make is that the iceberg is a very negative reflection of what it means to stutter. As I mentioned in my podcast episode about this, I’m a firm believer that someone can stutter and not experience those negatives.

If I were to create my own, I would see stuttering and struggling as a Venn Diagram. There is some overlap in the physical tension of stuttering speech. Depending on the type of stutter, this may be a small overlap or a slightly bigger overlap. Often, though, fighting the stutter does turn our Venn Diagram into… more of a circle…

*Ezra Horak, Stutterology - Venn Diagram of Stuttering’s Struggle*

[[Image Description: 3 Venn Diagrams of struggle and stutter. Top one is shows 30-40% overlap of stutter and struggle. Arrow to bottom left with notes of stigma, discrimination, fighting for fluency - this one is almost a full circle overlap. The other, bottom right, leads with acceptance, community, and safety, and has minimal overlap (5%) for struggle and stutter.]]

What I really hope to get across here is that most of the negative aspects of stuttering come due to more societal reasons, or in not having it be safe to stutter, or in fighting to be “fluent” - an impossible goal, since there is no cure for stuttering.

If we can make safety, acceptance, and community be the response to stuttering, then the amount of overlap between struggle and stutter will be much more minimal. And minimal amounts of struggle exist in nearly anything we do as humans. Getting out of bed can be a struggle. Reaching up high to grab something you need can have some struggle. But this level of “struggle” doesn’t have to ruin your whole life. The task can even be light-hearted. It’s just part of life.

What do you think? Does this feel true for you? Have you heard of other ideas? Have you seen stuttering presented this way before

FOOTNOTES: