Stuttering and fatigue

Many stutterers, overt and covert, admit that when they're anxious, tired or over-stressed, they'll stutter more than if they were relaxed and well rested. Following the birth of my second child, I was suffering from a serious lack of sleep. During the first 5-6 months, my son would wake up every two hours in the night. The absence of proper, uninterrupted sleep, caught up with me. Adding fuel to the fire, I began guzzling coffee during the day to keep myself functioning. I didn't know it would be possible to be this tired (go ask a doctor right?) What followed was a noticeable stutter, one I thought I'd outgrow in speech therapy years ago. I began overtly stuttering several times a day compared to the occasional pause here and there, that most people would barely noticed. There were times I'd almost forgot I was a stutterer. But there I was, stuttering again.Now I began speaking with lllllong l's and s's. I just felt nervous and exhausted all the time. Friends and acquaintances I'd talked to for a few years, had never heard me stutter and they were a bit taken back. The expression on their faces seemed to say "What happened to her or why is she talking like that?"  They looked confused, but didn't ask what was going on. I had to tell them

  In previous posts, I mentioned that many overt stutterers would called me a "covert" stutterer. This is because I don't stutter all the time and I use word substitution, short pauses, breathing techniques, to avoid stuttering, instead of stuttering through a conversation. Today the trend is to just stutter, don't try to avoid it, i.e. stop hiding and start stuttering. First, I'm not hiding anything. Second, if a situation were to arise where my speech could pose a problem, I would definitely say something. I don't feel the need to broadcast to the world that I have a stutter, because it's not something I think about on daily basis. Why? Because I don't consider stuttering a disadvantage. Why? Because under normal circumstances my dis-fluency is not THAT noticeable (no long pauses, blockage or twitching). If a person chooses to share that they have a stutter, I feel its a personal choice. It also depends on the severity of one's speech disfluency. Today the trend is to divulge personal information via social media and reality tv. This constant openness is what drives popular culture today and if a person feels the need to express themselves, then by all means go for it.  On one hand, if your disfluency is so slight that you can control your speech with some easy techniques, why not try to improve? Isn't that the ultimate goal?  On the other hand, if your stuttering is more severe and you're experiencing anxiety when you try to avoid stuttering, perhaps "just stutter" is the right approach.

Even though they'd never heard me stutter (or recognized what was going on) I told my friends that I was and still am, a stutterer. They were shocked and almost didn't believe me. I explained that the constant fatigue I was experiencing just brought it to the surface. The common response from my friends was "Really, I had no idea before. We just thought you were tired." When it was necessary, it felt good to tell my friends.

Now that my son is seven months old and sleeping through the night, I'm drinking less coffee, exercising more and stuttering considerably less. My speech is once again more fluid and smooth. When I feel a stutter bubbling up, I employ the techniques I've used since I was a kid: take a deep breath, slow down and begin to speak. The long drawn out l's and s's are less frequent. I'm feeling like my old covert stuttering self again.