Is it mental or environmental?
From the earliest memories that I have since moving from Symi Dodecanese, Greece, to Campbell, Ohio, I stuttered just like my dad. I was fortunate in attending a school that had speech specialists, mine was named Miss Anonymous since I think that she has since passed away and I don't want to disturb her family by calling and getting permission to use her name. She was a victim of polio and the ravages of the disease remained in her crippled leg and one arm. Yet, she spent hours with me and would record my voice. She would tell me, Do you want to listen. Then she would play and I would hear the most wonderful voice exquisite and learned. It was my voice and I wasn't stuttering. Yet, when I would return to class or try to talk at home, I stuttered.
Years later when I had spent years teaching English in spite of my impediment, I took a leave of absence and moved to Clearwater, Florida, to attend a graduate program at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. The thought of stuttering was a barrier to my willingness to participate in plays as an actor. But, guess what?
I quit stuttering when speaking and taught at the college level without stuttering. I married and pronounced my vows without stuttering. I opened my shop and sold gift items without stuttering.
My conclusion is that no magic or change of identity had occurred. I simply had changed my environment that was obviously of sufficient distress to invoke a horrible vocal block and occassional stuttering. I did not change my teaching identity. I taught in the high schools and in the colleges.
What I changed was my environment.
Will that work for all victims of stuttering? The only way I can make such a presumption is based on personal experience. But/ I also did not take the baggage of people who filled my environment with their hostile mental exudations and back stabbing behaviors. Will it work for all stutterers? Only if they also have the courage to drop all friends and family and move to a place where the environment and the population of the environment has all changed. What do you have to lose if stuttering is distressfull enough to make your living a living hell?
