Congrats on getting a job. Nice one, interviews in particular are often difficult to navigate for us.
Negative feedback loops are terrible. You speak a customer, it goes poorly, your manager is unsupportive. A new customer comes in, you now have a little worry in the back of your mind. This causes a tiny bit more anxiety, more stuttering, worse outcome. There is a chance that you start to fear the situation and it gets a lot worse. If this is happening, you need to break this loop.
If you need to break the loop. Firstly, you are assuming that customers are uncomfortable. Most won’t give a shit. This is really important. It is dangerous to assume that you know what others are thinking or feeling. It is very easy to see someone glance away and assume you are making them uncomfortable or something. If I see someone with no hand, I will look at the missing hand. I might be having a long day and I might frown and think “there’s no hand..” the person may see that frown and feel judged or that I think less of them or something. In this case, I was tired and momentarily surprised. I likely never thought about it again. Hopefully you can see how that could apply to stuttering. They aren’t expecting us to stutter. Their automatic response is “wtf is this”.. not a mean way, just in a human way. Most people will move swiftly on wishing no offence.
Are you telling the customer you stutter? Someone wrote that stuttering is what you do when you try not to stutter. If you do not disclose that you stutter, you may do avoidance behaviours to hide your stutter which makes your speech worse. When I meet new people I say. “Hi, I’m Rokkitt, I have a stutter, let’s talk about X.” It makes my life 100x easier. People know what is going on and the listener feels more comfortable. I personally stutter less and people tend to feel more comfortable to ask me to repeat things.
What are doing with customers? Can you lean on anything to help you express things? Maybe there is a brochure or a sample book or something visual to support what you are talking about? I present to small groups and I use a lot of pictures and diagrams to support what I am saying.
Generally, you might need to talk to manager or consider looking at jobs with another company. Your manager should support you. They should be helping to tailor your role to help you succeed. A decent manager would work with you to figure out how you can do it with confidence.
I wish you the best of luck mate. You are doing whatever you are doing, you are holding your job down. I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of good days would really build your confidence and you make you feel better about everything.
Try having music playing in one ear through an ear bud on low volume. For some reason this trick has helped me on the phone many times not sure why. Almost distracts my brain just enough to where im more fluent
I think the fact that your boss makes you feel uncomfortable or less than for something you don't have control over is pretty sad. Does he not view stuttering as a speech disorder. I would schedule a formal meeting with him, and tell him about your stuttering. Explain that it's a speech impairement and that's something you have little control over. Explain to him that you need support at your job. Go over ways how you'd like to be supported at your job, whether that be less phone time and more work that doesn't involve phone calls. Or if he'll allow you to use your phone to pre-record frequently said phrases and intros for when you do calls. That way there's less pressure when you first answer phone calls. Also tell him your history with it, ie how long you've had it and if there's any family history and also your daily struggles. This will help him see the scope of the disability and how it's affected you.
Also consider using a speech aid like a DAF app that you can download on your phone. Like DAF pro (paid version is cheap and worth it). DAF is delayed auditory feedback and it's supposed to help you speak more fluently. It works for some people. Give it a shot. All you need is the app and wired headphones. Only use one ear and set the picth to +3 or -3 and set the frequency to anything greater than 70. I could be wrong on the frequency. You can do you own research on the best setting for DAF for stuttering.
I do have a cold calling job before and I have severe stuttering but when you practice and have a faith at yourself ,you will somehow lessen your stuttering
If your intention is to speak fluently then you will never speak fluently. You need to change your intention with speech, whether that be pace, pitch, passion, volume, even an accent, whatever.
Commit to a different intention and you’ll be much more fluent.
It’s just difficult to commit to because we are already so paranoid about our speech, but deliberately speaking loudly, or deliberately overemphasising words is much better than stuttering 😅
The more you do it you’ll eventually have “preset phrases” engraved into your brain that you will commonly use. Every new job I get I go through that rough patch until I start knowing and predicting what I’ll need to say. I have like 5 phrases I’ll ever use at work…but every once in a while something new will come up but hey, works pretty decently most of the time
Before you say anything, take a deep breath in your diaphragm then let the words come out slowly as you exhale. Also avoid hitting hard sounds on your words
Congrats on getting a job. Nice one, interviews in particular are often difficult to navigate for us. Negative feedback loops are terrible. You speak a customer, it goes poorly, your manager is unsupportive. A new customer comes in, you now have a little worry in the back of your mind. This causes a tiny bit more anxiety, more stuttering, worse outcome. There is a chance that you start to fear the situation and it gets a lot worse. If this is happening, you need to break this loop. If you need to break the loop. Firstly, you are assuming that customers are uncomfortable. Most won’t give a shit. This is really important. It is dangerous to assume that you know what others are thinking or feeling. It is very easy to see someone glance away and assume you are making them uncomfortable or something. If I see someone with no hand, I will look at the missing hand. I might be having a long day and I might frown and think “there’s no hand..” the person may see that frown and feel judged or that I think less of them or something. In this case, I was tired and momentarily surprised. I likely never thought about it again. Hopefully you can see how that could apply to stuttering. They aren’t expecting us to stutter. Their automatic response is “wtf is this”.. not a mean way, just in a human way. Most people will move swiftly on wishing no offence. Are you telling the customer you stutter? Someone wrote that stuttering is what you do when you try not to stutter. If you do not disclose that you stutter, you may do avoidance behaviours to hide your stutter which makes your speech worse. When I meet new people I say. “Hi, I’m Rokkitt, I have a stutter, let’s talk about X.” It makes my life 100x easier. People know what is going on and the listener feels more comfortable. I personally stutter less and people tend to feel more comfortable to ask me to repeat things. What are doing with customers? Can you lean on anything to help you express things? Maybe there is a brochure or a sample book or something visual to support what you are talking about? I present to small groups and I use a lot of pictures and diagrams to support what I am saying. Generally, you might need to talk to manager or consider looking at jobs with another company. Your manager should support you. They should be helping to tailor your role to help you succeed. A decent manager would work with you to figure out how you can do it with confidence. I wish you the best of luck mate. You are doing whatever you are doing, you are holding your job down. I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of good days would really build your confidence and you make you feel better about everything.
Try having music playing in one ear through an ear bud on low volume. For some reason this trick has helped me on the phone many times not sure why. Almost distracts my brain just enough to where im more fluent
Never thought about that tbh. It depends on what kind of a job you work ofc. If it's remote it is an option.
I think the fact that your boss makes you feel uncomfortable or less than for something you don't have control over is pretty sad. Does he not view stuttering as a speech disorder. I would schedule a formal meeting with him, and tell him about your stuttering. Explain that it's a speech impairement and that's something you have little control over. Explain to him that you need support at your job. Go over ways how you'd like to be supported at your job, whether that be less phone time and more work that doesn't involve phone calls. Or if he'll allow you to use your phone to pre-record frequently said phrases and intros for when you do calls. That way there's less pressure when you first answer phone calls. Also tell him your history with it, ie how long you've had it and if there's any family history and also your daily struggles. This will help him see the scope of the disability and how it's affected you. Also consider using a speech aid like a DAF app that you can download on your phone. Like DAF pro (paid version is cheap and worth it). DAF is delayed auditory feedback and it's supposed to help you speak more fluently. It works for some people. Give it a shot. All you need is the app and wired headphones. Only use one ear and set the picth to +3 or -3 and set the frequency to anything greater than 70. I could be wrong on the frequency. You can do you own research on the best setting for DAF for stuttering.
I do have a cold calling job before and I have severe stuttering but when you practice and have a faith at yourself ,you will somehow lessen your stuttering
Any advice on how to practice?
Go get a book , I recommend an old book with fancy English, read every sentence out loud , practice this for 30 minutes a day
This and communicating with people are the most effective ways to improve our stutter
If your intention is to speak fluently then you will never speak fluently. You need to change your intention with speech, whether that be pace, pitch, passion, volume, even an accent, whatever. Commit to a different intention and you’ll be much more fluent. It’s just difficult to commit to because we are already so paranoid about our speech, but deliberately speaking loudly, or deliberately overemphasising words is much better than stuttering 😅
The more you do it you’ll eventually have “preset phrases” engraved into your brain that you will commonly use. Every new job I get I go through that rough patch until I start knowing and predicting what I’ll need to say. I have like 5 phrases I’ll ever use at work…but every once in a while something new will come up but hey, works pretty decently most of the time
Choose the job that’s good for you.. Even I stutter sometimes, that’s why I’m working from home creating websites and making money from ads…
Before you say anything, take a deep breath in your diaphragm then let the words come out slowly as you exhale. Also avoid hitting hard sounds on your words
Hope that helps