Can a Doctor Understand Self Disclosure for a Person Who Stutters?

As both a participant and intern, I took part in the NSA Spring2Day conference. It was a weekend packed with Zoom panels covering a short burst of all things stuttering: covert stuttering, job interview prep, open mic, and showcasing research. I had to audit the Research panel on Sunday Morning.

One doctoral student is studying the broad question of: Does self-disclosure positively impact a person who stutters? Her sub-research questions detail SD* (*self-disclosing) on a cognitive, behavioral, and affective outcome.

If you are new to the stuttering world, self-disclosure is the act of advertising that you have a stutter before or quickly into an interaction with someone else. This could be compared to disclosing that you have a learning disability, ADHD, or even coming out (there is an NSA Connects called Coming Out Twice focusing on this).

The whole concept of SD is new to me. Truthfully, I never wanted to admit that I had a stutter unless my life was on the line, and my attacker was increasingly growing impatient that I won’t say the codes because I was stuttering. Then I would say I have a stutter.

I could write a million pieces on SD (which spoiler alert I might), but the big thing I’ve worried about once I advertise it is if 1. It will make me stutter more, and 2. It will make me less confident in my speech. Because I’ve gone through friends and years of my life with no one knowing that I had a stutter, having to tell them just for the sake that I might not stutter is a considerable argument for why not to SD.

And according to the research, more people than I imagined agreed with me.

Based on her survey by 184 people, one of the affective outcomes states that while 68% of people believe that SD has made them more confident in speaking, 25% neither agree nor disagree. Also, her behavioral outcome was eyecatching. The data was split 50/50 on whether the practice of SD helped the person stutter less.

If anything, the research reaffirms my hesitancy behind self-disclosing. Of course, no one is telling me that I have to. I can share stories on how not disclosing made me cry myself to sleep and how it changed someone’s life. Ultimately, these numbers are subjective to a PWS’s experience, and it is still up to me how I want to dictate my speaking life. I am still figuring that part out.

*To learn more, feel free to watch the presentation on westutter.org while it still lasts.