Stuttering, Vulnerability, and Intimacy | Christopher Constantino | TEDxFSU

[Applause] i'm a person who stutters stuttering is genetic it's neurological and most people who stutter will stutter to some extent for their entire life i don't stutter as much as i used to and ironically i don't stutter very much when i talk about stuttering but my stutter used to be very frequent and very struggled it used to sound something like um something like that it used to sound something like this it's not so much that i don't stutter anymore it's that i've learned to react to the feeling of stuttering differently most of you probably know

what stuttering sounds like but not what stuttering feels like stuttering feels like you're stuck like your lips your jaw your tongue your vocal folds are being controlled by somebody else like you've lost control temporarily imagine if you will that we lived in a world where the primary means of communication [Music] was handwritten notes and you've got this problem where every time you go to write a note a ghost pushes your hand hard that initial push the initial loss of control of hand and finger and pen that would be the stutter that's what it feels like

but the person reading your note wouldn't be privy to that feeling what they would be aware of is the result of that push on your handwriting the way it interrupts your cursive the way it breaks your letters now imagine that this world holds penmanship in high regard that a clarity of writing is seen as clarity of thinking that inability to write neatly is equated with an inability to think neatly or maybe to think at all how would you write differently you might try to guess when that ghost was going to push your hand lifting the

pen up at random times when you thought you were going to get a push your reader would see all the breaks in your script you may squeeze that pen really really hard so that when you were pushed you didn't move so far your reader would see the rigidity in your script it would seem tense maybe making it sloppy you might fight with the ghost after it pushes your hand jerking your hand back down trying to reduce the displacement of your arm the reader would see the scribbles along the page as you brought your pen back

under control the reader wouldn't know which of those stray marks what they're seeing is a result of the ghost and what is a result of you reacting to that ghost you will have changed every letter you write rather than just the letters that were pushed stuttering works much the same way it's an inherently unsettling experience to feel like a part of your body is no longer listening to you and so many people who stutter do their best to avoid it and to try to hide it on top of that it's a deeply shameful experience communication

is how we commune with each other it's how we make friends find jobs find romance if i can't tell you my name what does that tell you about me if you can't talk to me how can you come to know me and if you can't know me how could you ever love me on top of the shame of not being able to do something as simple as speak on top of that feeling of loss of control stuttering is stigmatized the research on stuttering and discrimination is overwhelming children are teased and bullied adults are denied jobs

or fired from jobs or moved into non-speaking roles people who stutter are seen as less intelligent less attractive and less capable capable than their fluent peers even though stuttering has no correlation with any of these and so when you stutter it can feel as though you are doing the most shameful thing you could possibly be doing it feels a lot like being naked imagine if at random times unpredictably throughout your day your clothes just fell off imagine you were giving a ted talk and just down around your ankles i imagine you start acting different you

change where you went what you did who you hung out with the amount of money you spent on belts and suspenders you would be different even when your clothes were on stuttering is the same way what we know about treating stuttering is that the more we let it happen the easier it gets but that's easier said than done this is my area of research i study the subjective experience of stuttering so how it feels to the speaker and what i have found is that the less the speaker thinks about stuttering the easier their speech is

and the less it negatively impacts them but now imagine you were walking around ghosts were pushing your hands your clothes were down around your ankles and i said just don't think about it right that would be inherently unsatisfying and so through my years of having a stutter my years of being a therapist for other people who stutter of researching stuttering and teaching stuttering something i have found that's helpful that helps people to allow themselves to stutter openly and easily is to have a reason to stutter stuttering is easier if you have a reason to do

it and i found my reason and i think in doing so i found a universal law of human nature and that's what i'm sharing with you today in this talk it's that the more time we spend naked the more opportunities we have for intimacy i'm going to say that again the more time we spend naked the more opportunity we have for intimacy what's the essence of being naked i'm going to argue in this talk that is vulnerability and in order to be truly vulnerable you need two sides of the coin the first is risk right

to be vulnerable is to expose yourself to risk in the case of being naked what's the risk i guess you're exposed to the weather right the cold the heat the rain but you know that's not what you're thinking about right you're exposed to the judgment of others they might reject you by being naked we expose ourselves to rejection the other side of that coin though is intimacy in order to be intimate you have to first be naked how does intimacy work intimacy works through mutual vulnerability i get naked and that you and then you get

naked too right that's how it works through reciprocated vulnerability i learned to see my stuttering as an act of voluntary vulnerability an invitation to the other to reciprocate to get vulnerable to to get naked with me and i've had countless beautiful interactions that i would not have had had i kept my clothes on one time i was at a bar with a group of friends and there was a man sort of outside of our group who heard me stuttering quite a bit and he pulled me aside and he said i've got to talk to you

about something i've not been able to tell anybody about this but you know i hear you stuttering and so you know what it's like to have a stigmatized disorder and then he just opened up he he has a family history of schizophrenia and schizophrenia often comes on in your mid-20s and he was paranoid that he was going to develop it he overanalyzed every thought every feeling every behavior comically aware that this very paranoia was a symptom and he said i can't talk to anybody about this because i'm worried they'll judge me but maybe you'll understand

and we talked for hours that night i had a conversation i would never have had had he not heard me stutter he saw me there vulnerable and he got vulnerable too and that's how communion works another time i was on an airplane ordering a coffee and i had a particularly long starter unk coffee the woman sitting next to me waited for the stewardess to hand me my coffee and to move on and then she asked me what's that like what's it like to stutter and i told her i told her pretty much exactly what i'm

telling you today it feels like you're stuck like you've lost control but that's not the hard part the hard part is the shame and the judgment from others and she thought about what i said and she said i think i understand and then she related my experience with stuttering to her experience growing up as a black woman in america and feeling judged for who she was and once again we had a beautiful conversation that we i would never have had if i kept my clothes on i don't think any of this is unique to stuttering

stuttering is a means to vulnerability but it's not the only means we all have aspects of ourselves that we're trying to conceal trying to keep under wraps that we don't want anybody to know about what stuttering has taught me is that through voluntary vulnerability i can increase my opportunities for intimacy and i believe you'll all have that power too and so i want to encourage you to let your guards down share with others who you authentically are and make yourselves voluntarily vulnerable thank you