Greater Burdens Than Our Stammers (Summer 1997)
By Iain Holland
 
I'm nearly 50 years old and commenced my stammering career when I was about 6. Not only was I deeply traumatized as a young child by an accident which killed my younger brother whilst he and I were playing together--he was 4 and I 5--but I also had a stammering mother. To some degree, as a child, I possibly used stammering as an avoidance technique in much the same way that I may have intuitively perceived her stammer as useful. I feel it is necessary to understand what "purpose" our stammer served us in behavioral terms. Although in later life we may fail totally to accept that it has any purpose whatsoever--except, perhaps, that which makes life difficult--once it probably served some purpose. Possibly, I believe, if we can uncover that initial "purpose" of our stammer we can begin to undo its subsequent damage to our lives and, if not lose it totally, possibly replace enough of it behaviorally to greatly relieve the problem.
 
I grew into adolescence within a thoroughly dysfunctional family tormented by an alcoholic father and surrounded by poorly functioning women: mother, grandmother and aunts. I failed academically and at a fairly early age, maybe 12 or 13, began to recognize my homosexuality. Added to this I possessed quite a bad stammer. Life wasn't looking, with the benefit of hindsight, pretty rosy.
 
By the age of 16 my parents' marriage finally disintegrated and I was forced to set up in the World, get a job, get a life. On the face of it, again with the benefit of hindsight, I was poorly equipped for such an undertaking. However, at 16, the World appears different and one enters it with what you have and without yet learning of regrets. I got a job without difficulty, a flat and within a few months had made my way into the "gay" milieu of late '60s London. Overall this was a fairly painless transition. Oh! the resilience of youth.
 
A relatively pleasant 15 or so years passed by. Friends, relationships, employment, parties and some scandalous behavior led me to my early 30s. Certainly there existed a deep flaw in my character which kept leading me toward disastrous situations, but I was fortunate in being able to make and maintain close friendships which often had a depth of mutual understanding which made them very strong bonds.
 
My stammer was regarded as "charming" by those that commented at all concerning it and with those people I suppose it was. It only rarely appeared at all when with familiar people. I possessed one powerful and useful talent: I was witty and had a very sharp edged humor. I have never been able to tell a deliberate joke; my stammer would always destroy the punch line. But, equally, witticisms would, and still do, flash in to my head and have been delivered before I could think to stammer over them. I also have an attractive speaking voice and this is quite important too.
 
* * *
 
For those of you who are younger and simply feel aggrieved and possibly embarrassed with your stammer, I would suggest one important thing: Learn to laugh about it. This isn't at all trite or frivolous. Literally, laughter will greatly ease the problem. Sure, there will still be difficult and embarrassing moments, but if people can see that you are coping with it in good humor, so will they, and so the whole problem is quickly ameliorated.
 
Of all the people that I've spoken to with a stammer, those who have the greatest difficulty are those that either seek to conceal it (which is largely impossible anyway) and those unable to "see the funny side." Personally, I carry with me a repertoire of little anecdotes which, were I to think about it, I would call "funny things that have happened to me while stammering." In truth, some of them are hilariously funny--or, perhaps, it's how I tell 'em? Psychologically speaking, such behavior serves to put other people at their ease with you. At the stammering level, the name of the game is "learning to use it to your own advantage." It is a strategy in exactly the same way that speaking to anyone is a strategy, if the speaking could prove a problem then have a alternative strategy to hand which, though different, will achieve the desired goal.
 
Eventually I asked him, "Have you got a stammer?" He let out a sigh and became completely incomprehensible.
 
A couple of years ago I was letting a room. I received a succinct phone call from a guy interested in the advert I'd placed. He arrived to view the room, was pleased with what he saw, so I made us coffee. This guy seemed pleasant enough and continued a conversation for about 15 minutes, telling me something of himself. I noticed that his gums kept puffing out but otherwise his speech was quite distinct, his sentences reasonably well constructed (you can invariably tell a stammerer by their sentence construction which, if they are trying to conceal their stammer, can become extraordinarily convoluted).
 
Eventually I asked him, "Have you got a stammer?" I myself rarely stammer these days (which has its own disadvantages, believe me). He let out a great heaving sigh of relief and proceeded to become completely incomprehensible, such was the extent to which his effort not to stammer had exhausted him.
 
The question I must ask about this situation was "Why had he sought to conceal his stammer from me?" After all his suitability for my room was not going to be determined around whether or not he was 100-percent coherent! Did he seem OK and could he pay the rent were likely to be the prime criteria. He had quite a bad stammer, being one of those people who would not (or could not) give up on a word once commenced. He claimed, in subsequent conversations after he had moved in, that it didn't bother him much--I felt then, as I do now, that this was a fib, for if it didn't bother him much why had he sought so hard to conceal it?
 
As both a homosexual and a stammerer I have always been "out of the closet" on both counts or, at least, so I would like to protest. However the truth is that it was much more difficult for me to be an "out of the closet" stammerer than to be an "out of the closet" gay.
 
* * *
 
At about the age of 30 I was partaking of an afternoon drink at a bar in London. Life had become more problematic recently. I was living with a guy who was desperately (almost agonizingly actually) in love with me for whom I felt something not much less than contempt--a situation about which I am eternally sorry. I was drinking too much on a regular basis. Along the bar was a nice looking young man who I was trying to get the nerve up to speak to. In similar situations, I never got up the nerve and just carried on drinking until I was oblivious to the feeling of frustration. I was always, perpetually, frightened of those introductory words, frightened of stammering really. Sure, I could carry it off when I had a crowd of friends to back me up, to fall back on, to treat my erstwhile rejection as a joke or humorous interlude. However when confronted with a one-on-one situation I was fighting to breathe in reality. Somehow I had to get across the hurdle of those first few words and nothing made me brave enough for that. Always it had to be them!
 
What I suddenly realized was precisely that "always it had to be them." I had allowed myself to be robbed of choices, quite unconsciously as it happened, and had complied with the wishes of those that first addressed me. I was unable to initiate my desired actions but was forced to stand by and wait for the initial words, the introduction or whatever, to come from someone else. It is within those first few words with a stranger, whether a potential sex partner or landlord or employer, that one is most vulnerable and the stammerer has a severe problem when dealing with this initial short intercourse. Unlike most people with a disability that could be actually visible, the stammerer is invisibly crippled. Within a few hours of leaving that bar--which I did hastily--I was in touch with a speech therapist.
 
I cannot pretend that the process was easy or quick. I cannot even state that the real problems had much to do with speech actually. Therein lies the rub.
Today I scarcely stammer at all. The only time is really causes me any trouble is when I happen to be with a person who stammers-- somehow this seems to remind me of something I seem otherwise to all but have forgotten.
 
I started the process of speech therapy fairly convinced that all my problems centered around my stammer and that if I could but solve that issue and speak without a stammer then all other problems would somehow solve themselves.
This did not turn out to be the case and although today, 17, maybe 18 years after that afternoon and with a couple of degrees to my credit, I can honestly say that not stammering has not solved the problems, nor, realistically, should I have expected it to. If we attempt to hang our problems on one peg--which stammerers very often tend to do because stammering is that very obvious manifestation of certain problems--then we may be failing to see the real nature of the problems we possess.
It has been obvious to me from my observation of the many stammerers I have subsequently met since that fateful afternoon that each one carries a burden far greater than their stammer. Whether this is universally true I have no idea and of course it will depend on the individual how far they may choose to go with their therapy, but I would say to everyone, there are worse things than a stammer.
 

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