Recognizing your own stuttering patterns

Identifying your individual stuttering patterns is the first part of our approach. Here is how to start noticing them.

Why patterns are hard to see

Stuttering does not always fall on the same words or sounds, and the patterns behind it are unconscious. They are not always obvious, even to the person who stutters. Identifying them is essential for effective training, and it is complex and time-consuming.

What you can pay attention to

• Sounds and positions: do certain sounds, or the start of a sentence, stand out?
• Situations: stuttering often changes on the phone, in front of a group, or when speaking together with someone else. (NIDCD; ASHA)
• Physical reactions: tight lips, a tense jaw, held breath or eye blinks. (NIDCD)
• Strategies: avoided words or situations, swapped words, starter sounds, changes of pace. See coping strategies.
• What comes just before: what do you notice in the moment before a word gets stuck?

How to start

Observe without judging. Notes after conversations, or listening back to a recording of your everyday speech if you are comfortable doing so, can help you notice what repeats. The goal is only to see what happens, not to change it yet.

Why a second pair of eyes helps

Self-observation is a good start, but patterns that run unconsciously are hard to see from the inside. In our coaching, we begin with stutter profiling, where we assess your patterns, severity, and when stuttering tends to occur. Specialists then work with you to pinpoint your individual patterns before training begins. See the step-by-step program.

Because identifying patterns takes so much time and care, our long-term goal is software that can help identify individual patterns from speech samples. Read about our research.

Once your patterns are identified, they can be trained. See how new patterns replace old ones.