Profile: Mikey Tose

A BSA member talks about themself, their stammering, and what they find helps.

Mikey Tose

Current job:
Administration Assistant with an art college in Teesside. As well as providing administrative support to staff and inputting data, I provide reception duties in receiving phone calls, greeting people and dealing with enquiries. I also sell stationery items to students.

My hobbies/interests:
Cinema, reading film/sci fi magazines, watching Doctor Who, walking in my local area, running, swimming, clubbing, dancing and socialising with friends.

How has stammering affected your life?
I can't really remember a time when I didn't stammer. My brother stammers too so it's always been in my life. It makes some situations harder such as ordering in bars or asking for train tickets, and I sometimes wish it wasn't there. But I can't let it affect all my life too much. It has never held me back from acting on stage in amateur productions and making friends, and I openly disclose it to others. Maturity has helped me more come to terms with it, and I now realise the stammer is not as much a barrier as I thought to getting a partner. I think I just have to see which areas of my personal life and job duties it does affect and do the most I can to meet these challenges when encountered and learn from them.

Has stammering had any benefits?
It has made me more tolerant, open minded and non-judgemental of others.
I think it has made me appreciate my achievements more - such as going to University, gaining employment and doing amateur dramatics.
Knowing that a stammer can hold me back in life and actually not letting it hold me back, but expanding my comfort zones.
I listen to people more carefully, and in employment make more effort to ensure I have been understood when giving them information.
Meeting other local people who stammer and those at Conferences who are so inspiring to listen to and share experiences with.

What have you found most helpful in dealing with your stammer?
Individual speech therapy/support groups.
De-sensitisation (i.e. being willing to stammer openly with people), and positive thinking in reminding myself there are people worse off than myself, that I am stronger and braver than I think I am, and remembering past achievements.
Costal breathing techniques.
Having an active social life.
The BSA conferences.
Avoiding avoidance.
Self disclosure (i.e. telling people I stammer) and a sense of humour.

If you could go back, what would you tell your teenage self?
You will learn better stammer control techniques in later life. You will still have good and bad days but you will get through them with the tools you have.
Don't try too hard to be likeable. You are going to be more naturally likeable than you realise just by being yourself.
Stop being so self-conscious and hard on yourself. Inside every ugly duckling is a swan - and friends will see you, not your stammer.
Believe Sarah Jane Smith when she says "Some things are worth having your heart broken for."
Finally rethink asking your partially sighted mother to help dye your hair in 2006.

One surprising fact about you?
As a member of Guisborough Parish Pantomime Group, I researched my Wolf part in Little Red Riding Hood (2001) by watching The Wolf Man (1941) to study the title character's body movements to choreograph my own walk in the production.

What's important to you in life?
Things important to me are my health and happiness, and that of my family and close friends. Also appreciating more what I have rather that wanting what I don't have. Picking myself up again every time I fall, be it disappointment at a failed relationship or a job interview, is more important than I often realise. And to live with my stammer rather than have it live me - it's just another housemate I have to accept and get on with.

I want my defining traits to be my humanity and compassion rather than my stammer. This includes my compassion to help others and make the most of my life and all its adventures whilst I am here.

From the Autumn 2010 issue of 'Speaking Out', page 18