Episode 48- Tips for Talking on the phone if you Stutter.... by Stuttering DeMystified and Beyond

Hi, and welcome to episode 49 of Stuttering DeMystified and Beyond. This is Lori Melnitsky, your host, stuttering specialist, speech-language pathologist, ADHD life coach, and a person who happens to stutter. In this episode, I want to talk to you about a very personal topic to me.

I want to talk to you about how  you talk on the phone if you stutter. And I'm going to be honest with you, when I was younger, I used to hang up all the time on people I called.  Luckily,  this was before caller ID.

They didn't have cell phones years ago.  If I would call friends and their parents answered, I would hang up. I didn't mean to scare anybody. I was petrified of stuttering. And I didn't want to embarrass myself. I didn't want to be laughed at.  I didn't want people to say, hello, hello, hello if it took me longer to get words out..

It was kind of a very convoluted way of navigating life until I got to the point where I dodn’t wat to avoid. And this was before I really had speech therapy.

I worked for my father from the age of 13 to almost 21. My father and uncle owned a pharmacy  and I began to work for them. I had to answer phones daily .  There  was no way of getting around this. I had to say, hello, Modern Pharmacy. I didn't know who it was on the other end. There was no caller id.  My father stuttered when he was younger, much more so he had to also answer the phone.

I sort of had to put myself in speaking situations.  I had to work at a cash register. I had to answer a phone call. “Hello, Modern Pharmacy”. I had to answer. I had to ask for the prescription number. I had to ask for the date of the prescription. I had to ask for the doctor’s name. And in the early years, I'm trying to think, I don't think I had speech therapy because we didn't know that much about stuttering.

When I got older,  about the age of 20, I think I had some speech strategies. So what did I do? And also, when I was in college, I worked in the admissions office, and at first I would run away from the phone. People didn't know that I stuttered. I think I probably hid it. And all of a sudden someone said,  why is Lori not answering the phones? Uh-oh. Was I found out?

We don't want to let a phone or any technology control how we speak and how we lead our lives. So I hope some of these strategies and some of these tools help you. And again, it is a challenge, but it can be done and I now can make a call without worrying about it. I can say my name. And many of the people I work with are on the phone 90% of the day and have done really. So I want to just leave you with some words of inspiration. I think we kind of all need it, and this is actually by Queen Elizabeth II.

"It is often the small steps, not the giant leaps that bring about the most lasting change." So it's important to really do things one step at a time.

If I can help you in any way, please, my email is [email protected]. My website is www.allislandspeech.com. I am Lori Melnitsky and I run All Island speech and stuttering therapy online. Have a great day.