Stammering in development: how I owned my stammer (and stopped it owning me)

In the hope that over sharing is caring, plus <click bait> Nobel economist versus famous shoe. And swans.

End note easter egg

Last year I made a passing reference in a blog to my stammer, and said in the end notes ‘get in touch if you want to talk about managing stammering in development’¹.

I thought no-one would. The devil on my shoulder said this was ‘look at me’ signalling (ooh privileged white man has a problem!). However its more compassionate sibling said ‘if just one person follows up, it was worth it’.

Well, a few people have now got in touch about this endnote easter egg, so I’m sharing my consolidated replies in case this is of help to anyone else².

Writing about my stammer is also a long planned milestone in my efforts to manage it, so thank you for your patience.

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My stammering story is quite long and convoluted – but the actions I finally took, and being open about stammering, were the most important positive steps on the way.

The opposite – trying to supress or hide it, or just avoid speaking - was destructive and bad for my mental health. Many have written about how isolating a stammer can be, and I have vivid memories of feeling ‘locked in’. Recent research is filling in the gaps between a difficulty in getting words out and knock-on effects, some of which are pretty dark³.

I’m slightly ‘out of the game’ now as I have a management strategy that works well for me – though I still practice my preventative moves. It took me over 20 years to truly own my stammer, though once I took action the improvements came quite quickly.

Owning me

My stammer started when I was about 12 and is around plosives at the start of words (pee, tee, dee, muh etc).

It was quite selective – nearly absent when I was relaxed; extremely bad when I was stressed and expected to speak in more formal settings. So some people did not know I stammered (and still express surprise that it was ever a thing) and others thought I had an obvious problem – stammer or otherwise.

In my teens I never talked about it, and my parents and teachers never asked me about it. In hindsight this seems strange. I hope that things are different now.

I spent years actively avoiding formal situations where I might be expected to speak. On school committees and in undergraduate tutorials I never said a single word, unless forced. And I never spoke at a seminar or asked a question in a university lecture. Not a single time.

This was also a time when stammering was fair game for cheap jokes in books, films and pop music.

In terms of my stammer owning me, it was always on my mind and prompted a fairly radical career change - away from chatty social sciences and into swan catching, and through this animal behaviour and population ecology. I am interested in these things but the chief attraction was being able to avoid talking to people.

Speak to the hand. Sadly the ‘swanning about’ joke had already been taken.

However, after a 6 months of swan catching, setting up behavioural experiments in dark rooms with jays and magpies, and being offered the chance of studying elephant diets by picking through their dung in Botswana, I swerved back to social sciences. Winning PhD funding for social research involved a written application, but no interview. Phew.

Things got extremely bad during my PhD fieldwork in Tanzania, though my stammer was less of a problem in my efforts at Kiswahili than it was in English.

I would plan what I said to avoid starting sentences with challenging plosives, though ‘malaria’ and ‘mosquitoes’ - the focus of my research - both started with the hated plosive ‘Muh’. I dreaded questions like ‘what is your PhD about?’. ‘Mbu’ was a lot easier than ‘mosquito’.

Owning it

When I got back to the UK after a year in Tanzania I searched the phone book and wrote a letter to my local NHS speech therapy centre and asked for help (aged 25). They invited me to come for a chat, though said that self-referral at my age was unusual (they aim to catch ‘em young), and that the adults they saw were usually regaining speech after accidents (cars, guns, industrial machinery) or strokes.

I was enrolled for a fortnightly session with a speech therapist – we practiced sounds, speaking slowly with a metronome, and general breathing and relaxation exercises. It really helped – I think the ‘therapeutic session’ (acknowledging the problem and talking about it) was as important as the practice. I was also introduced to a group of male students with stammers and I met them a few times for a social chat – which was helpful, though I felt slightly fraudulent as, relaxed, I thought myself a more fluent speaker than most of them (reflection: we all have a tendency to judge).

The stammer came back in my early days in DFID – high stress, new country, new baby. I had probation feedback that I needed to say more in meetings. A kindly colleague put it like this:

‘DFID is an organisation of the chattering classes - there isn’t much room for the strong silent type’.

I focused on stress management and relaxation (including acupuncture) and things improved. I also remembered something the speech therapist had told me about redundancy in speech - if you analyse what fluent people say (think very active colleagues in meetings) there is lots of ‘redundancy’ - i.e. repetition and filler words, rather than novel or important content. I had thought that everyone else in DFID was really smart and confident, but subtly assessing my colleagues’ contributions for redundancy helped me. Hell, there was a lot of it⁴. I thought ‘I can do that!’.

I aimed for a meaningful spoken contribution in every meeting. I wrote down what I would say, but also took baby steps - actively agreeing and endorsing what others said. That was better than silence.

Backsliding

Next posting, a similar problem returned, and I had a disaster at a conference in Bangkok – my presentation started badly and then just fell apart.

A very good friend in the audience (you know who you are) spoke to me afterwards. She said that I contributed a huge amount, but presentation challenges were clearly a constraint. A Director who had also been in the audience and had a communication difficulty himself had said to her that he would be happy to offer me help – so during a visit to London I met him. He said that one of the simple things that works for him is saying at the start of every speech etc ‘You have probably noticed that I have a strange voice’ and explaining it. He suggested that I try this – which I did. So easy, yet it really helped - a massive pressure released. And brought about by the kind, proactive intervention of others.

I had a second meltdown in a posting/promotion interview (and the written feedback was really bad – unkind even - ‘just seemed really nervous?’), so in the next interview round I emailed the board beforehand and said ‘I have a stammer – expect it!’ and also repeated this at the start of my interview - which worked a treat.

So, generally I am open and frank about it. I used to start every presentation by explaining my stammer – though now don’t feel the need, but still do it if I have a problem with a word. Usually in a joking way - ‘my name is Peter and I have problems with my plosives, including P⁵’.

Later in the glory days when DFID really invested in its people, supportive line managers meant I was able to do a range of communication and personal impact training, including a 3 day course on impactful presentation. Led by two actors, this was explicitly for people who struggled with presentation (i.e. were bad at it), and included vocal exercises to do before any speech. I still do these in the washroom before a big meeting or event, or when I want to regain focus - look in mirror, stick tongue far out of mouth, and say name and address three times, as loudly as possible. I understand that this is an old theatre trick for throat lubrication (need to check in mirror for dribble on chin before going back into seminar hall).

Unleash the P-me

As well as making us do a presentation whilst being dragged from the stage by our peers (try it - great for maximising energy and oomph) the actors also introduced the idea of seeing your presentation persona as a distinct and separate version of you - so getting into performance character beforehand and arriving with purpose, not just sidling awkwardly from the audience to blink terrified in the spotlight. For managing my stammer I found this helpful - the P beast unleashed.

I also pushed myself to speak whenever the chance arose – actively volunteering for presentations, interventions, asking questions from the floor – so the very opposite of earlier me. I always wrote down bullet notes for the ‘spontaneous’ questions that I ask. Even the gags. I also asked for feedback about how I came across - and took notes for next time.

I made a mental list of ever bigger speaking challenges, and grabbed opportunities when they arose. And this worked for me (even if it annoyed others)(and maybe now this middle aged white man should shut up a bit). A few years back I gave a presentation partly about my stammer in the lecture theatre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). This was a personsl milestone as, during my PhD, I had had some pretty epic stammering failures in meetings with researchers at the LSHTM who I needed to try and impress. Another milestone was writing about my stammer. You are reading it.

And another milestone, the Mount Everest of public speaking was….

Stiglitz versus a famous shoe

I have always disliked, but also envied, the super-confident, young (usually) man who asks a ‘humorous’ (well, they typically laugh themselves) question in a public lecture as a way of getting themself noticed. If you stammer this is like seeing a unicorn.

So I set myself the challenge and it took me years to do it. Opportunity arose when Joseph Stiglitz gave a public lecture in Delhi in the 2010s.

Stiglitz and Bilmes had just published their book about Iraq - The Three Trillion Dollar War. Soon afterwards, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi had thrown a shoe at George Bush. Someone had offered $10 million to buy the shoe.

Stiglitz had spoken about trying to shape public debate and understanding of Iraq - hence the book.

I scribbled down my question, practiced it in my head, made energetic efforts to catch the Chair’s eye, then grabbed the mic as others (no doubt with their own gloating me-me-me question) tried to wrestle it from me. I still feel the tension - opposing voices in my head saying No! No! No! Yes! Yes! Yes! (about the stammer, not the bad joke).

I introduced myself and noted al-Zaidi’s efforts, and asked Stiglitz if his book - the three trillion dollar war - had been more or less effective than the ten million dollar shoe.

He replied with a wry smile: ‘All I can say is that no-one tried to break my legs for writing the book’.

I sat down - I’d done it. I was smug, attention-seeking and in my 40s, not my 20s. But better late than never. And no need to ever be ‘annoying joke guy’ ever again⁶.

The roots of my stammer are unknown but evidence now suggests it is part genetic, and neurological – an information processing problem that disrupts brain-to-speech transmission. The fluency of my speech can still be disrupted by background noise – which can be odd (flashback to my teens), but now quite funny. Anyone who speaks to me in a busy pub or at a noisy event will find me both a bit deaf and probably stammering. But that is no biggie for me. It doesn’t own me.

In the days of kind twitter I used to follow various accounts that offer support for adults who stammer – including groups of academics and those offering interview practice. I did not need to use these, but was reassured that they were there. I just had a quick google and see a variety of organisations. Help on hand if you take the first step.

I still see the public speaking me as an additional variant – the ‘P for Performance’ model – the ‘P’-Peter. I suggest this as an approach to others prepping for big events or interviews – don’t be just everyday you, practice the P-version and get into persona before you start. This is not just for those who stammer. The stammer is definitely not a super power, but the ability to switch on another version of myself feels like one.

Post script: I did an energetic training last month at SOAS as a two hander with Duncan Green (fluent, low redundancy), including some quite silly role play and lots of relatively spontaneous speaking. Did I stammer? Possibly. But I really don’t care or worry about it now – and being open and frank, and doing the preparatory exercises, all reassure me that it is no longer a binding constraint⁷.

I own it! (the stammer, not a swan). If anyone ever wants to talk, or to practice, please do get in touch.

Man can now catch swans and talk to people - including both at the same time.

1. the footnote said ‘I had speech therapy in my 20s and learnt some theatrical drills from my NHS speech therapist that I still use and they work for me - so if you hear or see someone in a conference hall bathroom looking in the mirror, with his tongue far out, repeating his childhood home address three times, in a slow, loud voice, please say hi. And if you want to talk about managing stammering in development - get in touch. And if you want to know a secret weapon to disrupt my ability to speak - ask my kids’.

2. Stammering: who and how many are affected? The NHS says that ‘Studies suggest around 1 in 12 young children go through a phase of stammering. Around 2 in 3 children who stammer will go on to speak fluently, although it's difficult to predict when this will happen in a particular child. It's estimated that stammering affects around 1 in 50 adults, with men being around 3 to 4 times more likely to stammer than women’.

3. For example…. Relationships between stuttering, depression, and suicidal ideation in young adults: Accounting for gender differences. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094730X20300759

4. I still do this. Spotting redundancy is a powerful insight but also a curse. Once you start doing it you can’t stop.

5. Which is ironic for someone who has called a new initiative the Practical Politics Platform. However, communication and marketing experts have also looked at this name, sucked their teeth, and said ‘ew - all those alliterative Ps - Peter from the PPP.

6. Until next time….

7. My apologies if anyone heard me shouting my name and address in the washrooms at SOAS before we started the workshop.