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From: Dale
Date: 16 Oct 2012
Time: 22:47:50 -0500
Remote Name: 76.255.117.52
Hi Carla thanks for the great questions. My earliest memories feel very powerful but it’s very difficult to be sure of my facts as to when, where and how. With my memory from kindergarten I was able to document that it did happen as I thought it did. I contacted the girl I kissed in kindergarten few years ago. Because she had an unusual last name, I was able to just look her up on the internet and I call her on the phone. I was surprised her memory of the kiss also had a dark side; she said that for years after that her mother would use that event in a sarcastic way when she was dating and things did not go well! If I had told my mother about that the little girl I kissed in kindergarten, I don’t think she would have used it in a negative way. My early memories feel to me like real events and not like dreams but I see know way to be sure. The age two blocked breathing event I listed in the essay was my first preverbal event I explored. For more than a year before I broke through I felt there was something very scary that was well below the surface and very important. As with all these key memories as I moved closer to remembering the event my stuttering became more severe. Then as I moved through this often overpowering emotional energy my speech would then calm down. You asked, “I'm wondering if those early dreams can just be the initial fear trigger for stuttering?” I have thought about this concept for several years now, so how did my stuttering develop? The blocked breathing memories from before age four all feel exactly the same as when my speech now blocks as an adult. I think this emotional energy I feel when my speech blocks as an adult has always been link to my preverbal communication struggles as an infant. As I have said many times and friends who stutter have also said, “My speech blocks just seem to come out of know where!” With more than ten years of work I think I may found where my speech blocks come from. Simply put, my voice would sometimes blocks when I was an infant and as an adult my voice still just sometimes blocks.