The words are on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t say them. Literally.
When affected by stuttering, a neurological disorder suffered by 1 percent of the world’s population, a person’s speech is constantly interrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolonged sounds.
Since March 2013, the UT Hearing and Speech Center has held “Support Group for People Who Stutter,” a program meeting on the last Thursday of every month.
“You figure that there [are] about three million people in the world and 1,800 people in Knoxville who stutter,” said Tricia Hedinger, clinical assistant professor at the UT Hearing and Speech Center. “The odds of someone who stutters running into another person that they know stutters is pretty small.”
Noting the absence of such a group in Tennessee, the National Stuttering Association contacted Hedinger who started “Support Group for People Who Stutter” with the association’s financial support.
Currently the group consists of three to 10 adults who gather in the conference room of the UT Hearing and Speech Center to share their experiences and frustrations. Group members are also encouraged to invite their families or loved ones to attend.
“Just the fact of people who stutter coming together and meeting other people who stutter and sharing their stories or practicing techniques without being scrutinized, they have that feeling of commonality and solidarity and that you’re not the only person in the world that stutters,” Hedinger said. “That’s what’s most helpful for them, to be able to feel less guarded.”
Although Hedinger usually prepares an agenda for the meetings, the group often spends the time chatting.
“We discuss what it means to be an effective communicator, identifying different aspects of what it means to interact with other people,” Hedinger said. “Sometimes when people stutter they put a lot of emphasis on being fluent, but that’s not always the most important characteristic.”
For author and UT alumnus Vince Vawter, the stutter stems from over-focusing on fluency and struggling to find his “voice.”
“You shouldn’t think like that,” Vawter said. “Your goal should just be to say what you want to say.”
In his novel “Paperboy,” Vawter explores the inner dialogue of a child who stutters, using his childhood in Memphis as inspiration. Typically, Vawter noted, children begin to notice their stutter at the age of 3.
“With young people, they still aren’t sure what’s going on,” he said. “They feel normal, they look normal, they’re smart and yet there is the thought that they can’t get out what they want to say.”
At one session held during summer, group members Skyped with several Germans who stutter, but lack access to a local support group.
“It was so neat,” Hedinger said. “The same problems that are happening in Germany are the same problems that are happening here … They experience the same difficulties.”
The support groups are open to all community members and students. The group primarily focuses on adults and their families, bu Hedinger plans to extend the program to include adolescents and mature teens.
Through therapy, speech-language pathologists can teach techniques to increase speech fluency as well as improve attitudes toward communication. However, Hedinger believes a support group can prove even more beneficial.
“Even if you have family and friends that are very supportive of you when you stutter, nothing really beats having a friend that has the same problem,” Hedinger said. “Just that feeling of bonding and knowing you have the same struggles that I do.”
