The Most Annoying Part About Wearing a Face Mask as a Person Who Stutters
Out of all the things I was nervous about with having a mask on as a person who stutters at work I did not expect my second tick to be the most annoying to have to navigate.
You know, when I started working again a few months ago, I was terrified of having to work with a mask on. Hell, even throughout most of quarantine I held off on getting a job, (#1 because I had financial security s/o unemployment and living at home) because I wasn’t sure if I could handle the anxiety of working on the front lines on top of having a stutter. You see, there wasn’t much dialogue going on with others during the early pandemic days. And if you were 6ft apart and outside, you would probably have your mask off. A heavy customer-facing role as a PWS is already hard. But with a mask on too?
That’s a new kind of Hell.
When you have a stutter, it will most likely come with a batch of second ticks. These are other behaviors associated with stuttering as a way to stop stuttering. They don’t actually help though. You develop them because at some point early on you might have done something that prevented you from stuttering and so all of a sudden you start to repeat said action. Eventually, it becomes a part of you.
Some second behaviors may include: saying: “like” or “um,” head nodding, eye blinking, hand motions, face tension (scrunching), etc.
I noticed that I tend to cover my mouth, eye blink, and head nod. I do say like a lot but I never really used it to derail my stutter or as a general crutch. I just have a problem with letting that one go.
Out of all of them, the eye blinking is the worst.
At work, or in general, if I talk to someone and I stutter with a mask on they might just brush that off as not understanding or hearing me.
But the really fast blinking is a dead giveaway that clearly something is going on.
And for some reason, I can’t help but wonder not only how scary that might look but also how unsettling it might seem. Because of the mask, they have no idea why I’m doing what I’m doing. Even if they didn’t know it was a stutter regardless, they could at least see my mouth to know that there’s something going on beyond me looking like I’m about to have a seizure.
It makes me embarrassed for myself.
I tried working on it years ago
One of the books I read said to take note of your ticks and write them down. Because eye blinking is a common one, the author had a pretty good exercise for helping combat that: eye contact.
Seems obvious I know, but I quickly realized it was harder to practice than I thought.
Whenever I would close my eyes or look away or blink when I was stuttering, it was always because I didn’t want to see the person’s reaction. That one never fails to upset me.
Because they are mostly just strangers, I don’t really bother addressing it. If they laugh I just repeat myself, finish the job and move on. I just didn’t think it would stand out as much as it did.
But I guess if you don’t see my mouth then that would be the next thing you notice.
I guess we go back to practicing eye contact again, shall we?
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