What Causes Stuttering & Treatment for Stutter | Dr. Erich Jarvis & Dr. Andrew Huberman

This clip is from the Huberman Lab episode "Dr. Erich Jarvis: The Neuroscience of Speech, Language & Music." The full episode can be found on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/LVxL_p_kToc

So here's the thing. I had a stutter when I was a kid. It went away, and I even used to be praised for my public speaking skills. It came back when I was 12 years old due to extreme stress in a class and stayed for a big part of my life. I'm 27 now. It hasn't gone away completely, but I've learned to deal with it. I've realized taking a B12 tablet the night before a big day where I have to speak helps me speak much more clearly. Does it calm my nerves? Maybe. Also, know that your words matter. You matter. Don't try to say all your words in one breath. Speak slowly. Speak with confidence. You got this!

Bro it's such an embarrassing moment that people judge you by seeing stammering problem they think we are Illeterate because we don't communicate with them in the fast way 😕.

One of my friends has very bad stuttering and we had some weed couple of times together . And when he is high and relaxed his stuttering stops. I was shocked

I’m loving this convo of stuttering. I’ve stuttered my whole life and I love your perspective. That being said, it’s not about any rhythm and finishing sentences. I truly believe any strong minded individual can overcome a lifelong stutter

I am suffering from stammering and it affecting my academic life my entire life 😭

There is without a doubt a link between oxidative stress and stuttering, whenever my oxidative stress is too high, I begin to experience stutter like symptoms

I once had a job interview and the interviewer said to me, “Do you realize you stutter?”. He then said he wouldn’t hire me because I could make the children stutter. It was a teaching job. Of course I wasn’t hired but the nerve of the interviewer surprised me. I went on to get hired at a different school system and later became a school psychologist. I often wonder what happened to that man. He thought stuttering was contagious. Maybe he helped me in a strange way. Nobody ever asked me about stuttering since that day.

Man, this stuff drives me crazy. The Docs are wrong and right at the same time. I did it, my best friend did it, all those famous people did it, and we did it the same way. Just like every other person who did it. It never goes away but it gets so minimal that it doesn't ruin your life anymore. The thing is it's really hard and you gotta have balls to do it. But most stutterers won't cause it feels good to feel sorry for yourself and success is actually scarier than failure in the paradigm of a victim. It's simple immersion therapy. To stop stuttering you have to live like you don't stutter. Make 20 calls a day to random stores and ask random questions. Walk up to 10 strangers a day and ask what time it is. Life your life, make your appointments verbally. I beat my obscenely brutal blocks in a month. You have to really want it. It's scary, you'll cry, the anxiety is terrifying but it freaking works. Anyone who has actually overcame their stutter will say the same freaking thing. I still stutter but I don't care, it's so minimal it doesn't matter anymore.

I found a book earlier this year called “How to Stop Stuttering & Love Speaking” by Lee Lovett. It’s a really good read for stutters as it will help you greatly reduce stuttering, but more importantly improve your mind. I highly recommend it because I’ve tremendously improved my life because of that book.

I never stuttered until I experienced severe ptsd from a near death work accident. The thing that helps me is to pause think about what you’re going to say and then say it. I don’t always stutter, it’s just extreme under stress which is frankly too common in my life at the moment. I repeat words and phrases, forget what I’m talking about, stutter on syllables and sounds. I often mix the wrong words together or use speech that is entirely wrong. I am 36 years old. I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not ashamed of my disabilities. I am strong for what I’ve been through and my ability to fight and live. Mental injuries, like physical sometimes never recover. But the strongest people are the ones who have been through the worst. Never feel bad or ashamed for being different or having trauma. Treat people kindly and apologize for stuttering if it happens and let them know that you have a disability. Sometimes you’ll talk to an extremely rude self centered person who will hang up on you or ignore you in real life. Those people are miserable and always will be. Their life is worse than yours. Stay strong guys and never give up.

I Suffer from stuttering and the feeling of not being able to express what you are trying to express is so frustrating. This makes a big difference in life.

Love your work sir, thanks for everything.

Finishing the end of someone else's thought is particularly common in neurodivergent people, specifically ADHD and Autism. Like you said, its a way of acknowledging that you are following the conversation and you understand it well enough to predict the outcome. I try to hold myself back from doing this as much as possible because i understand it can come across rude, but its really difficult as its such an unconscious thing. I have great anxiety over being misunderstood or misunderstanding others, and so this has become a sort of coping mechanism to show that im on the same track with the conversation. Nothing annoys me more than when im talking to someone and theyve been saying "yeah, totally, yeah..." etc, and then I get to the end of my thought/speech only for them to misunderstand the entire point or not see the outcome I was getting to. Makes me feel like they were just vocalizing while pretending to listen but didn't understand a word I was saying. So if i get to the end of sentence and say "it just made me feel so..." and the other person fills in "awful. Yeah, i totally get that" then im going to feel like i communicated well enough that they could put themselves in my shoes and interpret exactly how i felt. When I'm with my one friend who is also AuDHD, we tend to fill in eachothers sentences and thoughts a lot and the conversation just flows so natural between us, like we are the same person. But talking with other people, even my own family, feels like a weird performance ... like having to learn all the etiquette and rules for addressing royalty or something. Feels foreign to me. I have such a deep need for feeling understood and so I love conversations that are engaging in that way, that encourage others to empathize and get so passionate that they can't help but chime in. Its also the same reason us neurodivergents will often interject with our own similar stories or experiences unprompted. Its viewed as rude, but its our way of saying "I understand you, because..." and proving that we have the experience to be able to understand and we aren't just agreeing or offering platitudes because its socially expected. My husband expressed his feelings of not really caring about his deceased father's wife anymore, that he basically views them as being divorced because his dad wasn't happy in the marriage before his passing, and how he wishes he could straight up tell her that he doesn't want anything to do with her anymore but feels almost forced to be nice and include her in things still. I followed up with my own example of my dads ex wife and how i don't feel any connection to her anymore and could care less if i never see her again, but that i too feel this need to be nice to her and keep up this front that she is still a mother figure to me. While anyone else would have thought i was rude for interjecting the way i did, my husband has a similar way of talking and this actually helped him not feel so guilty about the way he was feeling. (Especially because he saw my ex-step-brother the day before when he was shopping and he gave my husband a hug ... husband thought it was so weird because he's not even family anymore). Anyways, that was a really really long way to say that neurotypical and neurodivergent speech styles and patterns are often vastly different, but it doesnt necessarily connect to a speech impediment like stuttering.

I had a severe stutter as a child but it was out of pure anger I stopped lol I’d practice every letter I had trouble with for years and singing also. I don’t stutter anymore and never went to any kind of speech therapy.

My teachers and school wanted me in a special needs school for being shy and having a stutter !! thank god I have such a good mum who told them I was okay! And I just have a stutter they treated me horribly for years in school but it made me a strong person I just hope kids today don’t get treated like this! Once I got to secondary school I had a stutter but I did so well for myself without the need of a special school I’d hate to think of how I’d of ended up :( probably forgotten about

I’m a 29 year old who has stuttered since he could speak. Only over the last 5 years have i made serious progress in addressing it using Wim Hof and other styles of breathwork. I feel strongly enough about this that i intend to be speaking with you about it eventually, Dr. Huberman. I think the territory is ripe for exploration, and i feel strongly that i’m slated to be a soldier at the forefront of it. I feel that bringing the introverts into extroverted reality is where this game needs to/is going. MAPS might even agree…let’s get this party started!!

My parents are abusive to me and my parents and the rest of the family says it’s lying when I stutter but the truth is me stuttering is a language processing issue and it has nothing to do with lying

In the 70's I sought out a book on stammering in my local library. The theory advanced was that stammering related to too much testosterone in the womb before birth. That seems to have been dumped-no harm. My theory now is that there is a short circuit in the brain while talking which interrupts the flow and causes tension and stammering. Love to hear the latest learning that this curse through my 70 years has led to so much unhappiness

I’ll give you guys some personal input. I never stuttered before I was 19. When I was 19, I had a life threatening, very severe traumatic brain injury on the mid right side of my head and brain. I stopped breathing, couldn’t move, went into a coma, forgot how to talk and swallow, and had to have immediate life saving brain surgery to save my life. After this, I have severe stuttering whenever I get anxious, nervous, or even just indecisive about something. Idk if that helps, but I’m saying, to me, getting brain damage in the area of behind your right ear, and the area of the skull near there, to me, personally had caused my stuttering.