Distraction helps me control my stammer

Image

Caption

Chris

Chris Martin shares what he calls 'the distraction method', a technique he came up with by chance that makes him speak with more fluency.

I would like to tell you about a technique which has really helped me with stammering. Growing up, I tried everything but nothing seemed to work. But one day I came up with an idea. I thought maybe if I distracted myself whilst blocking, I would come out of it. So I tried it. When I next spoke and felt myself stammering, I put my hand on the table and put pressure on it. By sheer coincidence, I didn't stammer.

As it seemed to work for me, I did this whenever I spoke — I pressed my heel down, scratched myself or touched a table if it was around. And now I hardly stammer. On occasion, if I'm out at a restaurant, for example, and I notice a stammer coming, I put my elbow on the table and I find that I can come out of it.

• Join our community! Become a STAMMA member for free.

It's just a simple method to initiate or to 'trip into' or 'get into' a sentence. But I suppose it could work if you get stuck anywhere in that sentence. Ultimately, I'm distracting myself from the thought process of 'Oh no, I'm stammering', which then made me stammer more. It's like when you sing, you don't stammer. Or when you act a part on stage and don't stammer — you're taking another persona. Sometimes I only need to look at something else while I'm stammering on a word and I'd be distracted by what I'd just seen.

My background

I went to school in Ireland and anytime that I read in English, I stammered. When I read Irish Gaelic, however, I didn't stammer, which I thought was very unusual. One day when I got up to read aloud in English class and stammered, one of the boys at the back of the room laughed his head off like it was the funnies thing he'd ever heard. My teacher, a big guy who played rugby, went up to him and smacked him on the back of the head, and said, "None of that!" and he never laughed again. 

It was amazing, it brought tears to his eyes and he said, "I can’t believe I just said that".

That was my life then. I left school at 12 and worked on a farm before joining the army and seeing the world. All that time I didn't speak much because I knew that when I did, I would stammer. When I left the army I thought, I've got to do something about this. I tried everything, I went to speech therapy and had elocution lessons. My speech therapist suggested I practise speaking by phoning up train stations and asking for their train timetable. On one occasion, I remember I dialled a number but just could not ask the question and I literally broke the receiver in my hand, it was so intense. Nothing seemed to help so I stopped trying.

But it was when I saw the singer Gareth Gates speaking on TV in 2002, that I started thinking about it again and came up with the idea of using a distraction to help me.

Trying it with others

My son stammered as a child and I used the method with him when he was 8 or 9. Now aged 34, he's the general manager of a multinational company and gives talks every day all around the country. 

A friend of his also stammered, and when he was visiting one day when they were younger, he was reading and I tried the method out with him too. I put the book on the floor and said, "I would like you to step over the book and then say the first word". And he did, without stammering. It was amazing, it brought tears to his eyes and he said, "I can't believe I just said that".

I spoke with another friend of my son's who stammered and asked him to read, but rather than stepping over a book, I asked him to press his thumb on the tabletop if he felt any anxiety at all, and then say the word he was stuck on, and he didn't stammer.

Try it — touch your seat or whatever's around you while you're speaking. It's so simple, but it's weird how it helped me, my son and his friends.

I wanted to share this technique with the community. If it helps even one child, one parent, I'll be happy, that's my aim. They could use it in schools, or anywhere, it's so simple a thing to do.

See our Help For Your Stammer section to explore all the options available, including therapy, courses, apps and self-help.

If you would like to get in touch with Chris to ask him about his method, email editor@stamma.org and we'll pass it on.