The Box

Having a stammer can be difficult to describe, but stop me if you identify with this analogy: during the bad times it’s like being trapped in a box where no one else can see you or hear you, but the box has a mind of its own and it chooses when to engulf you. Sometimes its appearance is predictable, but often it’ll sneak up on you completely randomly. And because of that, you’re on edge all the time, not knowing what to expect. It’s like you’re the star of your own horror movie - there’s no escaping the box when it wants to find you!

I used to think that I’d never be able to get away from the box, as I so rarely felt like ‘me’. In my head I could be confident, charismatic, funny, great to talk to. But the signal to noise ratio between my brain and my mouth was, shall we say, non-optimal. What I hoped could one day be my personality felt completely underwater when I interacted with other people, and it was impossible to give it the buoyancy to reach the surface. The truth is, I thought I didn’t matter. Could never matter. I couldn’t express myself properly and I would never be able to. And there was no way I could break the cycle.

Then I met a friend who stammers, who had been on a costal breathing course. It seemed like she had so much more control over her voice than I did. I asked her about the course, and she told me about the life-changing effect of the technique she’d learnt. She was so excited to talk about it! I asked her if she could teach me the technique, and she laughed and said no, that I’d need to experience it in the proper environment to properly ‘get it’. But despite everything, despite how I felt inside, despite the obvious contrast between how she sounded and how I sounded, I was still too scared to sign up. What a mistake. It was only a full three years later, when I was totally at the end of my tether with my wildly out of control stammer, that I did manage to book myself on the course. I couldn’t wait to gain more control of my speech. This was going to change my life, just as it had my friend’s! It was like I could finally see a tiny chink of light through the curtains. My course was set to happen at the end of March 2020.

You know what happened next, right? Covid. The UK was put in lockdown.

So my course was cancelled only a week before I was supposed to go. It seemed a cruel twist of fate that the first worldwide pandemic in my lifetime just happened to hit at the same time as this lifeline for my voice! The universe didn’t want me to gain control over my stammer, did it? It was laughing at me. It wanted to keep me in the box where I belonged.

It was a very long seventeen months before the course could be rearranged, and my already submerged personality had by then sunk deep into the sea bed. Lockdown had been awful for my voice and my confidence, and I was so stressed every time I opened my mouth. I was still hopeful about the outcome of the course, but it felt like I had such a long way to go, even further than when I’d booked. When I arrived on the first evening to meet the mentors who were going to teach me, and my fellow newbies who were going to learn the technique, I was incredibly nervous and my speech was terrible. But somehow it didn’t matter.

Three days later, I was a new person.

When I started learning the costal breathing technique on the first proper morning of the course, my overriding fear was that it wouldn’t work for me, that maybe I would be the only new person there who couldn’t do it. But when I took my first big costal breath and said my name perfectly with projection, the sense of exhilaration and relief was something I’ll never forget! It was like I finally understood how to talk, and all those years of frustration seemed to drain away in that one single moment. Even though I found it very hard work over the three days of the course - learning to apply the technique was exciting but also emotionally, mentally and even physically draining - I felt like I was flying. The possibilities seemed endless. And I quickly made so many great friends there, whether it was my fellow newbies or the people who were teaching me the technique.

It was so amazing to know that all the mentors who sat opposite me had BEEN me. They understood the toll that stammering can have, the loneliness we often feel, the emptiness of not being able to express ourselves as we’d wish. The sweaty palms, the anxiety, and (for me personally) the absolute blind terror at having to use the phone. But they also told me how the course had changed them forever, how things were going to get better for me. I was among kindred spirits and the most friendly, most supportive atmosphere I had ever known.

I went to that course as someone else but I left as me.

When I got home, my new feelings of profound optimism continued. It was a long Bank Holiday weekend, and as I used the technique among family and friends, I found that I could now control the pace of conversations. I was actually phoning people for fun! It felt like I’d unlocked a cheat code to fluency.

Nothing lasts forever, of course, and that’s also the case with costal breathing. It isn’t a cure for stammering, it’s a lot of hard work every day even after you’ve learnt the technique. And the technique is never mastered, only tamed. I’ve found that you get the same reward out as the effort that you put in, and there have been times since that first course where I have still struggled with my speech, albeit from a much better base point than I ever was before.

Twice a year, I would go back on the course to top myself up, and help teach new people the same technique that transformed me. This proved even more rewarding than learning it myself, as I could tell others about my real life experiences, the little hacks that make things easier, and explain with pride how I’d gone from my heart pounding whenever I heard a phone ring in the office, to being able to call to order a takeaway, or get the right result on a bank helpline, or actually deal with my car insurers rather than have to ask someone else to use the phone on my behalf. How now I don’t just think of things to say but actually say them. Out loud! So people can hear them!

Having a stammer is still difficult to describe, but when that pesky box tries to engulf me, surprise me or stop me, I know that I can always use my best costal breathing technique, just like I did in that course room. When I do this, the box lifts off me. It’s somewhere else, leaving me to live my life as I want to.

And through my actions and my hard work, I know I can make it sleep.