Being raised as a JW, as I got to a certain age, I was expected to join the ministry school.
Well, the trouble was that I had a severe speech impediment. How severe? I often had to jump up and down just to get one single syllable out of my mouth. Whenever I tried to speak, it felt like my chest and throat was caving in . . . no air, no sound.
I was only permitted to associate with JW's in that spiritual paradise. This is what I got most of the time from friends and family:
"Heh-h-h-hhhhhh, hi Cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-Corrrrr-v-v-v-v-vvvvvinnn!"
Let's see, what was everyone's take on my condition? Folks gave me such tips as the following:
1. You are just trying to talk faster than you can think.
2. Your brain is working faster than you can talk.
3. You are thinking too much about what you are trying to say.
These were the three most popular conclusions those around me came to, all of them absolute genius.
If I didn't have such a severe speech disfluency at the time, I would have told them all, "Um no. You are all wrong. I can't force air past my throat and vocal chords to make human speech sounds because I was so severely emotionally beaten and abused as a toddler and young boy that I was tramatized and now suffer from what's called a "crushed spirit" and no amount of meetings, and magical Watchtower reading is going to help me, you morons. And telling me about how everyone is going to die at Armegeddon, how that I will be tortured in the great tribulation and have to watch my mother die is not helping either . . . "
Solutions offered to me were things like, "Just slow down" or "take a deep breath, then talk".
Fast-forward to age 16. I joined the ministry school to go along with my newly baptized status. I was roped into it because a brother told me that Moses had a speech impediment too, and if he could be God's prophet, then I could certainly join the ministry school. I thought, gee, I am just like Moses. In retrospect, Moses most likely did not suffer from the same affliction I did. He probably just had a lisp or talked like Sylvester the cat or something. If he had the severe disfluency I had, it would have taken him till Armegeddon just to tell Pharo to l-l-l-l-let the p-p-p-p-people g-g-g-g-go.
So I prepare and practice my first assignment, a Bible reading. I get up on the platform and start to speak. Nothing. I start sweating and turning red from just trying to force air over my vocal chords. Still nothing. I stood there for about 1 minute feeling like an idiot and as I looked out at all the pious and semi-patient faces, I became ill. I looked at my mother and could see that, although smiling wanely, she was clearly embarrassed. I simply closed my Bible with as much composure as I could muster and walked off the platform and straight out the KH door and burst into tears as I reached the parking lot.
Only one person followed me. It was not an elder. It was not the brother who had been studying with me and brought me to baptism, and it was not even my mother. It was a thirteen year old girl, Jodi. I was studying with her little brother, Jared, (I was selected to be the perfect example/role model for the boy since he too had a stuttering problem). Jodi came outside and put her arms around me and consoled me. We are still friends today, btw.
After the meeting, I got a couple of polite and lame shoulder pats and one "Good try, Corvin. You'll do better next time."
This is one of those things I have been holding in for 20 years and I just needed to get it off my chest. Not looking for sympathy, but god, the shit I went through. I am sure there are others out there who have gone through the same thing.
Well, I have gotten past the speech disfluency I use to have. I did not do it by receiving all that Christian love from the congregation or by taking in accurate knowledge of God, by working on points of counsel in the ministry school, or even by Jehovah's holy spirit . . . (hell, at least Jehovah gave Moses the words he needed when the time came). 13 years of speech therapy did not help much either.
I did it by attacking this thing head on . . . when I was 22, I took a sales job in which I had to give 25 minute sales presentations all day long. I progressed to the point where I could stand before a hotel banquet room full of guests and give a lengthy presentation. I soon became a sales manager, recruiter and trainer. I still feel that same tension in my chest and throat, but I am able to get control of it very quickly. Today, I have a job where I have to stand before a club full of patrons and be articulate, quick and fluent. I have to entertain and nothing has given me wings more than doing that.
I went toe to toe with my ex-wife's attourney (I did not have one) before the judge and verbally battled it out for custody of my kids. My ex-wife's current husband remembers me from my days of disfluency and often referred to my speech impediment (made fun of me and tried to belittle me) when we have gotten into it over the way he treats my kids. Kicking his lawyer's ass in open court was the best vindication ever.
Anyone who has gone through a similar experience will understand what I am talking about. I just want to say that you can over come it and do better. The key for me was simpy this: If you want to be successful in any area of your life, simply model the person who is already getting results in that area . . . do what they do, say what they say and say it the way they say it. In this case, I had learn at age 22 how to actually speak. The physical mechanics of the simple process of speech everyone takes for granted were completely foreign to me. I had to learn how to stand, move and breath just to fascilitate fluent speech. Weird, huh?
[Edited to say] There are different causes for speech impediments. Some impediments are due to physical limitations such as the shape of teeth, lips, bridge, etc. My disfluency was purely emotional. It was pretty much like growing up with an anvil on my chest. My disfluency was caused by paralyzing fear and the inability to breath properly, to relax my vocal chords and throat. I would block sounds and repeat sounds mostly.
Corvin