36. How to help a stutter

Speaking with a stutter can really knock your confidence and affect your life. This episode offers three tips to help a stutter. Keep in mind it is a medical issue and a speech pathologist should be your first port of call!

Transcript

Do you stutter or stammer? Yeah, I imagine it must be really frustrating for you and knock your confidence around a bit and we can't have that. So in this episode, I'll give you a couple of tips to stop a stutter.

I'm Sally Prosser. You're listening to That Voice Podcast. No matter who you are or what you do, your voice matters. So unless you've sworn a lifetime vow of silence, this is the podcast for you.

Welcome. Welcome to episode 36 of That Voice Podcast. And I need to be super clear upfront about this. A stutter or stammer is often a medical condition, but I need to declare I'm not medically trained, I'm not a speech pathologist. All of my medical training has come from Gray's Anatomy and Scrubs. So if you have a stutter, this is really important. Talk to a speech pathologist.

What I can do in the next 10 minutes is give you three basic strategies you can use to help reduce your stutter. Remember, this is not, instead of medical treatment, this is as well as. First of all, what is stuttering. So it's all about the flow of speech. You know you want to get something out, but the words are just not in the right place at the right time. So you might repeat sounds like I c-c-can or sometimes just make no sound at all. Like you actually just get stuck. Now these things can happen to everybody even if you don't suffer from an ongoing stutter.

I was reading about one in 100 Australians stutter, so it's fairly common. It usually starts between the ages of two and four. This one really surprised me though. It can start overnight or it can build up over time, so I'd be interested to hear what your experience is. Reach out and let me know. You can contact me on Instagram @sallyprosservoice. That's also my Facebook page. LinkedIn or my email sally@sallyprosser.com.au. I'm always interested to hear from you and let me know that you're listening.

If you do have a stutter, naturally of course it can affect your anxiety and your stress levels. You just, you're just freaking out more, right? I understand. So I want to take you through three things that you can do that will help you slow down, catch your breath, catch your thoughts, and hopefully find your words. And this is what I go through with everyone. It's not just if you have a stutter.

The first thing is to use is the "thought drop voice follow" technique. So what I want you to do is imagine that above your head is a big lotto ball machine, right? The big lotto ball machine above your head is all of your thoughts just bouncing around. And what tends to happen is one ball drops down and then we just shoot it straight out of our mouth in words. Straight away, the ball drops, bang, bang, bang, bang. Now the problem with that happening is we can feel out of control of our words. We get into a situation where the words control us. We don't control the words. So instead what I want you to do is imagine that as the balls drop down, you want to wait for them all to drop. Bang, bang, bang, all the balls dropp down and then you deliver your words. Thought drops, voice follows. I know it's quite funny when you think of the phrase "balls drop, voice follows." That's a whole other podcast. All right, so imagine that the thought is dropping and then the voice is following and that will help you feel more in control of your words and slow down because what needs to happen when those balls are dropping down, those thoughts are dropping down is we need to take a pause and that's okay.

There's a lot of pressure when we talk to fill every single space, but we don't need to. You're much better off to take the time. Think about what you're going to say and then deliver because you'll feel like you are in charge of the words and it will help you feel a lot more calm. When our words get away from us, things start to unravel, right? We tend to go downhill and our breathing is affected, our heart rate goes up and everything gets worse and worse. So if we can prevent that from happening, it's a really good thing.

The second thing I want you to do is make your words fat. What do I mean by that? Well, one of the best ways to slow down. Of course, breathing low and deep, breathing low and deep is always one of my tips. I feel like I've mentioned it in so many podcasts. I'm going with something a little bit different today, but breathe low and deep and make your words fat. So what I mean by that is as we're speaking, stretch out the middle of our words. We stretch out the vowel sounds. We're speaking on the out breath, so they're full of air and it's another way to feel in control of our words. They also sound nicer generally if we're trying to slow down. So let me give you an example. Instead of saying "hi, it's so great to be here today" we're going to say "hi, it's so great to be here today." So we're going to slow down, not by taking more pauses, but by stretching out the words. And there's a difference. If we were to take more pauses, it would become this. "Hi, it's so great to be here today." So too many pauses can sound a bit robotic. What you're better off doing is making the words nice and fat. So let's think of another phrase. Um, what have I done today? I made two TikTok videos today. So hear me stretching it out. I made two TikTok videos today rather than I made two TikTok videos today. So by stretching out the words and making them fat is a great way to keep in control of them. Fantastic.

Now the third tip is to practice, practice speaking, practice speaking with somebody that you know and trust. So a family member or a friend. And if you don't want to do that or as well as doing that practice just by yourself practice in the mirror and practice recording to your phone. All the smartphones have that voice memo app that's built in and you can just put that on and talk. If you don't know what to talk about, describe the room you're in. Sit here and say, well, I'm in my office right now and I've got a nice copper clock on the wall and Oh my plants need to be watered and Oh yes, I definitely need to do some cleaning up of this desk and the floor definitely needs a vacuum. There you go, that's my office at the moment. But just describe what's around you. Then describe your wardrobe. Describe what you like to do and just that practice of speaking out loud will help you so, so much.

A lot of the time at the moment we are on our phones, just texting, messaging, emailing. I remember I had a meeting with somebody, it was about 11 o'clock in the morning and she said, Oh, you're the first person I've spoken to. So if we're not in practice of speaking it will be a lot harder to do when we need to. So practice. So fantastic. Those are three tips that anybody can use, but they will help with a stutter. "Thought drop, voice follow." That's number one. Number two is making your words fat by stretching out the middle. And number three is practicing either with a family or friend or with a family or friend, a family member.

See all of us sometimes have words come out, not the way they're supposed to. And if I'll just add in here, just be forgiving. You know, for ages I didn't want to make a podcast or even do live videos because you might think that's crazy, like "Sal like you do this stuff right?" And that was exactly what was holding me back. I was thinking, Oh my goodness, if I stuffed something up or make a mistake, people are going to think I'm, what sort of voice coach is she? She can't even talk herself, you know? And so I thought, no, that's silly because I have so much to share and if I let that hold me back then it's just so hypocritical because I tell everybody that they should get out there and so be forgiving. And if something comes out, not right, don't worry about it. Chances are it will. I don't think there's anybody that every single time they speak, it comes out perfectly like absolutely not. So just be forgiving and go for it.

If you know someone with a stutter, here are three things that you can do. And the first one is under no circumstances make fun of them or laugh at them. Even if they're trying to make a joke about themselves, it's just not funny.

The second one is to be patient and listen. Wait for them to finish. Don't jump in and finish sentences.

And the third thing is reassure the person. Tell them it's fine. Focus on what they're trying to tell you, not the stutter. Don't draw attention to it. And let's be honest, all those things are kind of just being a decent human being, but it really helps because you would know if you have a stutter, it can be quite debilitating and it can really affect your confidence. And so the last thing you need is anybody else giving you a hard time about it. And if they do, just call it out or you know what better still tell me. You tell me and I'll call them out because I think that's disgraceful.

So as I mentioned at the start, if you have a stutter, go and seek medical advice, go and see a speech pathologist because just think of how much better your life will be if you feel confident saying what you want to say. Because you need to say what you want to say because your voice deserves to be heard. So I would hate to think that something like a stutter is holding you back.

Now it's so exciting for me to see the registrations rolling in for My Six Week Voice Makeover, which is run via Facebook and it kicks off on May 25 2020 now if you use the code TIKTOK you get $100 off. So that brings it to just 197 Australian dollars, which believe me for this kind of course, it's pretty much giving it away. So just head to my website, www.sallyprosser.com.au and you'll see it there on the home page.

Now next week, I don't have my guest locked in yet, so I don't know what next week is going to be. You'll just have to tune in.

Thanks for listening to that voice podcast, full transcripts and all my episodes are at www.thatvoicepodcast.com.