Janet's Story
Janet Givens, who at the time of writing worked in gestalt therapy with her husband Woody Starkweather, talks about her own path of self-discovery.

I have stuttered since the age of six. I remember the first time the words "stuck" in my throat. I remember them because it was the first time and I thought something had broken in me. I came to believe over the years that I had broken; that I was defective. That belief colored my life for 36 years.

By age 42 I was living a life that I thought was as good as it could be. I had finally become successful at hiding my stuttering (this omnipresent proof of my defectiveness) from most people I lived and worked with. I stayed away from situations, sounds, and subjects that I believed might expose my secret. Since I did not repeat sounds and, by and large, words no longer got stuck in my throat (since I just avoided all possible scenarios where that might happen), I sometimes went so far as to claim I no longer stuttered. But stuttering still ruled my life, coloring every decision I made.

By all outward accounts, I was a success. I was the successful wife of a successful businessman and the successful mother of two beautiful children. I held responsible jobs in fund raising for prestigious organizations. I would do nothing to rock this boat I was in. Certainly the idea of getting to know my stutter, getting to understand when I stuttered, how I stuttered, and certainly why I stuttered, were of no concern to me. Indeed, the idea of looking at my stuttering made me so anxious, I would never even entertain the possibility. After all, I knew when I stuttered: whenever I felt the least bit anxious, which was almost always. I knew how I stuttered: the words got stuck in my throat in wouldn't come out. And I knew why I stuttered: I was defective. What good would any further inquiry be? I determined to live my life as the ostrich with my "head in the sand". I figured if I ignored it long enough, maybe it would just go away. After all, wasn't I getting better and better at hiding it? The fact that I lived my life in chronic stage fright, always on the alert for possible exposure and instant humiliation, was becoming "normal".

Suddenly, my "successful" life turned inside out. My high school aged son was diagnosed alcoholic. Not only that, it turned out he had been "using" for three years. How could I, the ideal, perfect mother, have been so blind? As I began the slow process of healing and regaining my sanity in the face of such insanity, I learned the extent to which I had been unable to see what was in front of me to see. I learned the power of denial.

Through the kind and gentle ways of a good therapist, regular attendance at Al-Anon meetings, some weekend workshops, and one full week of treatment for co-dependency, I began to see how my own denial - that had started out as a way of protecting myself from the painful humiliation of my stuttering - had developed to such an extent that I had become numb to much of the reality around me. One of the facts I had not been able to see was the important fact that I was NOT defective; I was just hurting. I came, slowly, to accept myself, just as I am, stuttering and all, and to be willing, in fact eager, to understand this aspect of me, just as I wanted to understand the whole of me. I began to wake up from the long sleep of my own denial.

Two years later I was talking on STUTT-L - the internet discussion list for people who stutter that I had joined early in my quest to learn as much as I could about stuttering - and I was explaining to someone how I could actually feel the stutter approach and could feel it working it's way toward me, through me, and on out. Then, I realized and had to admit that this had actually not happened to me for about six months. In other words, I just wasn't stuttering as often as I used to, at least not in an anticipatory way. This metamorphosis had happened so slowly and so unconsciously as to be fairly unnoticeable. There had been so many other, more important, things to attend to.

Today, I still stutter, but the moments are few and far between, now maybe twice a month. I no longer anticipate at all. And the way I stutter is also different. It is more like that of a three year old: I have a few quick repeats of the initial sound, usually it's my "pesky p's" as Woody once called them. But the best change of all is that when I do stutter, I meet it with an "oh, there I go again". Or even, sometimes, I can exclaim, "See, I DO stutter." It's just no big deal. I like to compare my stuttering now to hiccupping: there's no shame, even some chuckling. It may interrupt what I'm saying, but I can get right back to the topic at hand and often no one else even notices. How different that attitude is from the days when my fear was so intense I would literally go numb rather than feel the fear and shame.

Today I am grateful for my son's illness, without which I'd still have my head in the sand. I can't imagine anything other than wanting to save my son (a misguided notion of my own power that I gratefully did not appreciate at the start) that would have led me on this path to self-discovery. I am very grateful for the therapists I met and worked with during this time. They challenged me when I most needed a push. I am also very grateful for the friends I met through my work in 12-Step recovery (e.g., AL-Anon and a number of others) who nurtured me when I was most vulnerable and who showed me what unconditional acceptance and love were. They taught me, through their example, how to love myself and give myself the unconditional acceptance that had too long been missing. I came to believe that I was "enough" just as I was - stuttering and all. I still hated my stuttering, just as I hated my son's alcoholism, but now I could look it in the eye. Now I could let myself feel it, touch it, experience it fully, instead of constantly running and hiding from it. In so doing, and without even realizing it at first, I was getting my power back.

© 2002 Janet Givens