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Comment by nodesocket | Hacker News Reader

I also have a stutter, and I've blogged about being a single founder with it (https://justink.svbtle.com/being-a-founder-with-a-speech-imp...). I've had a speech impediment since I was a kid. I was told I would grow out of it. Still waiting for that to happen. :-)

I've noticed my stuttering has seasons/cycles of worse times, which seem to be tied to stress or anxiety over important calls or meetings. My stuttering has certainly been frustrating and frankly limiting as a founder, since my latest company (https://elasticbyte.net) requires more person-to-person interactions (talking to clients and closing deals).

The singing technique (mysteriously don't stutter when singing), while it is effective, does not work in a business setting. Darn!

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Did you stutter during interviews? If so has it had any impact on whether or not you could obtain employment?

The singing thing is interesting, off the top of my head I can think of a few rappers who stutter but can clearly speak their lyrics in their songs. Maybe it's less about the dynamics of singing and more about focus shifting to a low anxiety activity?

Stutterer here. Answer to both questions in my case: Yes and yes. I had potential employers just hang up the phone rather than wait for me to complete a sentence. I was completely unable to find a job (any job) when I fished undergrad with a 3.7 GPA in mechanical engineering. It was pretty scary at the time; I was convinced I was going to starve.

I know this anxiety and disappointment. Knowing the answers, having the information for potential investors or clients, and completely bombing. It is frustrating indeed. I usually let people (investors, clients, etc) know upfront that I have a stutter, definitely seems to help. I can't believe somebody would just hang up on you though.

I can't believe it either. I wrote a post on how I eventually sorted myself out: http://eyeofthesquid.com/blog/2014/04/25/walking-the-path/

You mention in your post that you found a good speech therapist. Can you share? Were they local?

There is a link to the therapist, Tim Mackesey, in the post. He was local (in Atlanta, GA). I saw him 14-15 years ago, not sure what his practice looks like these days.

Singing uses different neural pathways... sometimes people with speech impacted by a stroke or other injury can actually sing well.

People stutter for different reasons. I had some traumatic bullying when I was in 4-5th grade and developed a severe shyness and stutter as a result. The big switch for me was when a drama teacher encouraged me to look at the foreheads of the audience and focus on the line. Eventually your brain figures out that everybody isn't out there waiting to laugh at your expense and in my case I never stuttered again.

I'm also waiting to grow out of mine :) For me it's worst when talking about something I'm passionate about to a party that may have an opposing view.

The thing that has worked best for me is acceptance. It gets worse when I try to hide it. When I start a conversation I even fake stutter a bit, so periods of real disfluency don't seem as bad in comparison. When I do have a particularly bad moment of disfluency, I just tell the other person that I have a speech impediment, in a humorous way if possible. Being open about it makes things better for both parties. Then you can focus on the content of what you're saying, with less anxiety about the delivery.

For those really bad days, you can use AirPods with a DAF app, though I've yet to try it myself since it goes against the acceptance approach.

My brother had great trouble pronouncing a certain letter until he moved across tje language and adopted the local dialect.

Suddenly he just started pronouncing it correctly.

Later he was able to use it while speaking normally.

(Mentioning it since it might work better in a business setting. And yes, I think he used to stutter as well but this was many years ago.)

Have you ever looked into the valsalva hypothesis around stuttering?

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