David Potts: "Take the Power Away From Your Stutter"

You had talked about, and it resonated with me, being a covert stutter most of your life.

Yes.

Describe that for the listeners and what were the implications of being a covert stutterer?

Yes, yes.

I think that ties in very well to what we were just talking about.

So to me, what it means to be a covert stutterer is trying to hide the fact that you stutter.

So you don't want the people you're talking to to know that you're a person who stutters.

And there are various ways to do that.

There are people who just might talk less.

There are a variety of tricks you can use.

You can... switch out words if there are particular words that you know you're going to stutter on.

You can pretend like you don't know the answer to a question or you just, you know, just aren't that smart, I guess, if you, you know, can't say everything that you want to say.

So I think for me for a long time, I didn't feel... comfortable with my identity as a person who stutters, and I didn't want people to know that.

So I would use lots of those same kind of tricks as I just said.

And, you know, kind of to your analogy about how it's like allowing the other team to win, I think...

In terms of my own experience, covert stuttering was just a lot more effortful communication, having to just meander around words that I was afraid I was going to stutter on.

In the times I actually would stutter, I would primarily stutter in what are called

blocks,

which are a lot more tense.

They were usually quiet.

I wasn't actually producing any sound.

I was just trying to... push out the sound I was trying to say and it just felt like a lot of work to try to say what I wanted to say and I think the fact that I would would avoid particular words and I would do this and that like I wouldn't actually always say everything that I wanted to say and I think for me that actually led to some missed opportunities earlier in my life where perhaps I wouldn't do everything that I wanted to do.

I perhaps wouldn't go out to all the social events I would want to do.

Perhaps I wouldn't ask out girls on dates because I was afraid of, you know, afraid of showing myself as a person who stutters.

So I think...