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Quick personal thread on that #stutter: Only just realised @JoeBiden has a stammer. As a stammerer myself, I normally spot people straight away who have one but have learnt to manage it. But now I can see (hear) it clearly. I guess you can say he overcame it pretty well...
I can't speak for all stammerers (a diverse bunch), but maybe my story is not atypical: I began stammering as a boy. I may have inherited (or learnt it) from my Dad who still has it. It escalated when I started school. The stress drove it on. Felt like a gibbering wreck at times
Thankfully I was taken to speech therapy, going through every generation of therapy theory from Pavlovian reward systems (I got my first hamster as a reward for reading fluently), to Personal Construct Therapy and finally 'voluntary stammering'.
This is where you drop the dream of 100% fluency, and aim to 'stammer fluently' - not avoid it but relax into it. Everyone is disfluent. Also everybody harbours fears of their own (public) utterances. It's not unique. Difference is, stammerers are (or I am) petrified of it.
Walking a plank resting on the ground is easy - harder if it's raised over a 2m drop. For me, this made sense: stammering is what you do when you try to avoid it: ticks, repetitions, rephrasing, avoiding words/situations/careers etc. If you display it, you short-circuit it.
I was to start from 'least scary' (talking to my mum), did voluntary stammers there,then worked upwards in a hierarchy of stammer-anxiety situations. Shops, class, girls, etc. Lots of relapses happened. But eventually school plays, teaching assistant. I was getting on top of it.
I began announcing my stammer at job interviews & later at beginning of lectures. Today I can go on national TV (albeit a small nation, Denmark). There's more to it of course, and every stammer is a different story. Gaining confidence, getting help, being lucky. All plays in.
My luck was I got help. The #NHS provided a wonderful therapist (free at point of delivery), Jackie Turnbull. I enjoyed getting out of school and being taken to talk to her, very near the @UniversityLeeds - where I am now employed to lecture. My own 'inaugural' coming up in May!
Bonus: here's Biden on stuttering. He demonstrates a few 'voluntary stammers' too. He's Pretty good at it.
