stuttering

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I have this problem which is starting to irritate me - I'm not actually sure if it's anything to do with my Asperger syndrome (it probably isn't though), but sometimes when I am talking to people, especially strangers, I find it difficult to get my words out, and it is starting to make me feel embarrassed. It usually happens when I am going up to someone to ask them something, for example when I have an appointment and need to tell the receptionist why I am there.

I get this awful feeling like my voicebox is being strangled, and I have to breathe in in order to get my words out, otherwise I am scared I might stutter. It is really embarrassing, because when the person asks "how can I help you?", it takes me 2 or 3 seconds longer than normal to start speaking. It usually only happens at the beginning of a sentence, and when I am talking to that person for the first time in my visit.

It doesn't really happen when I am with people in my family, only when I am out.

It has only started to get worse over the last few months. But even when I was younger, I used to stutter sometimes, eg "w-w-what are you doing?".

Does anyone have any tips on what I can do about this? Do I need to control my breathing patterns in a particular way? For example, should I start speaking while air is still in my lungs, or only after I have exhaled?

Try singing.

I am a perfect stutterer. I always have the problem of not being able to say a word so I think of an alternative/ I am great at thinking of alternate words... so my stuttering is more of a pause than a stutter. I used to be a very slow and calculated speaker until someone laughed at me about it, so I introduced rhytm and speed.

My speech problems like that used to be a lot worse - though usually I'd end up grabbing the wrong words, saying yes instead of no, 3 hours instead of 3 minutes, and by the time I did all the verbal dancing to try and correct that I really felt like I'd convinced the person I was completely crazy. Humiliating? Extremely.

Now I think the only real problem I have is with my voice - something about it gets drowned out in a noisy room and it's like only certain frequencies of it travel. Even now I can be speaking loud enough but I have to repeat myself about 2 or 3 times to a lot of people. I still have a stuttering or word-mashing problem but strangely enough, it only comes from specific mental applications (especially when I try to joke arround in ways that my nervous system finds to be too NT, I end up trainwrecking it completely).

The worst problem I have is with a self stutterer. i know of the problem but it seems to make it worse. Dunno why!

I think self-consciousness works that way for everyone. I know, it's really f'd up because you'd think that the more aware of most things you are that the more your willpower and conscious effort should help the process rather than hurt it. Whether it's with stuttering, public speaking, women, sports or whatever, it always works like that and its a real shame because it really holds people in their place who are willing to put 110% into fixing a problem or getting something they want out of life. The human nervous system is really wired that and I think that's one of those things that keeps people really being enslaved to their genes.

I've always had the same difficulties when speaking, especially with people other than family and real close friends. But the funny thing is every job I've had involved heavy contact with customers either on the phone or in person and when engaging with them I rarely had the same problems finding my words or stuttering.

Even when I was a reporter for my college newspaper or interviewed people as part of class assignments when studying journalism, it was as if I became instantly neuro-typical when it came to interaction. I guess it's like when actors or singers stutter yet when they're practicing their craft, they can pronunciate words normally due to them being planned in advance.

Next time you have to speak with strangers, it would be helpful for you to plan out exactly what you want to say, word for word. And when you do, think of it like an actor delivering his lines. If it's over the phone, you can even write down what you want to say. I did this on the job at a call center and it worked quite well. Oh, and don't worry about speed. Just take your time, even if you think it takes longer to communicate. People aren't as concerned about speed as much as the content. Believe me, I live in the South and I talk even slower than people here.

i studder all the time. i think i do so only because i dont really know what other people want to talk about.

I words up my mix a lot. It's kind of annoying.

I also stammer and stutter, sometimes quite badly, when upset. That's more scary, because it scared the people I'm trying to talk to. I guess it's a bit like I broke, in their eyes- I mean, when someone who speaks normally most of the time with a few flubs here and there suddenly starts repeating the same syllable ten times before spitting a word out, it's proably pretty alarming.

I don't feel like there's anything wrong with my psychiological ability to speak when this happens, though. It's like my thoughts are stuttering, too.

I used to have similar problems, mainly in high school. Caught quite a bit of flak for it too. Now I usually know pretty much what I am going to say before I enter any given situation because I rehearse it all with as many variations as come to mind. Sometimes though I still find myself talking beyond my original intentions, and that leads to some brief mid sentence pauses when my word queue fails to return the appropriate word. But another word always pops in fast enough that I don't even have time to panic. But when a situation that I do not expect at all arises, I can get pretty stuck. Case in point: The other day I went to class and the previous instructor was still there. Sometimes she is slow to leave, but she never says anything to me so I didn't pay any mind. But then she came up to me out of the blue and asked if I was OK! I was rather stunned and started trying to stammer something out to the effect that I was OK, but my mind was already in a spin. I was racing over everything since I walked in, trying to figure out where I messed up while at the same time trying to figure out the depth the question and if it indeed had a simple solution. Well, all of this took only a few moments probably, but it made it even harder to reassure her that everything was in fact OK. So she started to ask more questions and by that time I was beyond the deer in the headlights mode and heading into a speechless blank mode. I wanted to just shout 'I have aspergers', but couldn't. I got ' I am OK' out a few times and finally she left. Reflecting on it now, I worry that she may feel she offended me by asking, and that it might keep her from asking another student later on that really could use some help.

I stammer.

I stutter sometimes, but most of the time I stammer. I try to talk and either nothing comes out, or it comes out ina jumbled mess.

I too have a problem initating speech. Even when I do get around to speaking, I confuse myself, stutter, and so forth. I frequently mix terms up (they are wired incorrectly..) such as leg and foot (or) arm and hand. When I want to say hand I will say arm. However, when I want to say arm, most of the time I'm ok - or I draw a blank.

It sucks.

But I'm ok faking total neurotypical talk. I can mostly speak to authority figures with absolute ease while bumping my vocabulary up much higher than usual. I suppose I have taken up 'speaking stupidly' on a daily basis to avoid negative attention.

I stutter sometimes, more often under stress. I also often forget words or I feel like it's hard to get the words out so I don't pronounce them right and I talk slow. If you have anxiety that can definitely worsen such problems. Using your vocal cords on a regular basis is important to keep up speech. When I haven't had to talk in a really long time it's always more difficult to speak clearly. I have anxiety, but I often have a degree of expressive language problems with or without anxiety. Planning ahead what you have to say or what you might have to say (if at all possible) can be really helpful, too.

I don't actually stutter but my thinking is so visual that I often have a hard time finding the words. (And even when I do find them, they come out in such a way that I end up really confusing people a lot of the time.) I'm pretty quiet to begin with and I talk even less when I'm tired. When I'm overloaded I'm pretty much mute because the words just aren't there. Like other people have said, planning what you want to say ahead of time can be very helpful.

Yes, I stutter. But my stuttering appears to be completely anxiety-related. So when I am calm, I usually don't stutter. But when I am not calm, the more and more anxious I am, the worse and worse I stutter.

Stuttering

These are the criteria in bold which I fulfill:

1. sound and syllable repetitions
2. sound prolongations
3. interjections
4. broken words (i.e. pauses within a word)
5. audible or silent blocking (filled or unfilled pauses in speech)
6. circumlocutions (word substitutions to avoid problematic words)
7. words produced with an excess of physical tension
8. monosyllabic whole-word repititions (e.g., I-I-I-I see him)

Number 7 usually only happens when I am COMPLETELY stressed and anxious. Top level.