Acting out a persona to fit in

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Rick

For Rick Mansell, life seemed an insurmountable challenge with a stammer. Here he describes the hostility he endured and shares the tactic that helped him cope.

I can't remember when I first stammered. In some respects, it feels as though I had always done so, but I suppose it must have been when I was about ten years old. I was something of a shy child and as I got older I started to stammer more. It was at secondary school that the implications of having a stammer became more apparent. To my fellow pupils, stammering was a sign that you were a simpleton, educationally sub-normal, and therefore a prime target for humiliation and abuse. 

I can remember even today sensing the buzz of expectation increasing when my turn to speak in class got closer. When it finally did, the whole classroom would erupt into gales of derisory laughter. The more crushed and humiliated I felt, the worse the ridicule got. It was not just my fellow pupils. I remember extremely well how, during a French oral exam, a teacher threw a wooden board rubber at me as I started stammering and cut open my top lip, showering my desk with a mixture of blood and chalk dust.

Struck dumb

To say I loathed my predicament would be an understatement. I believed everybody when I was constantly told that I was as 'thick as two short planks'. My schoolwork suffered because I thought there was no point trying and I was to leave school with much lower grades than might otherwise have been the case.

It became obvious, I thought, that if I was to achieve anything in my life, then I had to control my stammer to the extent that it was hardly noticeable.

Did anybody care? Not really. My parents felt that I would grow out of it in time. I had no problem with one-to-one conversations with them. The school? Not in the slightest. There may have been schools in the sixties that did try and help children with stammering, but mine certainly did not.

I was still at school when I developed something of a defence mechanism. Rather than suffer the awful juddering of the mouth and jaw when trying to speak, I would simply not speak at all. If I felt there was the remotest chance that I would stammer, then I wouldn't say anything. To all intents and purposes, I was struck dumb.

The pressure to sound fluent

As I approached the end of my miserable years at school, I viewed my rapidly forthcoming adulthood with trepidation. There were so many aspects of life that would be so much easier, in a great many respects a prerequisite, I thought, if one could speak and communicate clearly and effectively, and I associated this with being fluent. Those people who could stand up in groups and look and sound confident; those who actively and willingly took part in debates. These were the people to whom everybody looked up to and paid attention. Those who stayed in the background and said nothing were ignored.

The persona I wanted to convey was that of a very confident, experienced, red hot trainer. So I pretended to be just that. To my complete astonishment, that was exactly how I came across. 

It became obvious, I thought, that if I was to achieve anything in my life, then I had to control my stammer to the extent that it was hardly noticeable. It was not just getting on top of stammering. I had to be able to speak with enough authority and confidence that I was listened to and was able to influence. Yet the obstacles seemed mountainous as I moved into adulthood and started work. There were so many situations that my gut instinct said to run away from — addressing meetings, making presentations, even my wedding vows! How could I even make a start in tackling my demon?

Projecting a persona

As my life progressed I was inexorably drawn, like a moth to a flame, to situations that required me to speak in public — briefing employees, presenting to boards of directors, presenting prizes at annual awards events, wedding speeches, even funeral tributes. 

There was one precise moment, exactly when I can't remember, that I decided to adopt a tactic that I had never tried before. This was to choose a persona that I wanted to project in the course of speaking and, in other words, act out that part. I first did this when I was running a training course. The persona I wanted to convey was that of a very confident, experienced, red hot trainer. So I pretended to be just that. To my complete astonishment, that was exactly how I came across. Very gradually, I came not only to manage to speak in public but also to enjoy myself.

I still occasionally stammer today, or at least I find myself in situations when I think I'm going to stammer. Although I've learnt to live with it, I still see stammering as an affliction that will always be with me, mainly very much in the background but always there. 

There is a lot of help available today that was non-existent sixty years ago. Had it been available then, I do know that my life might have been very different.

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