#01 - Patrick McReaken

When did you first become aware of your stutter?

The first time I noticed my stuttering was when I was four or five, and my parents asked me to recite part of the story of Pinocchio, which they had had me memorize, to my grandma who was visiting. I stumbled and stammered and there was lots of pressure to not do that. The understanding I have was that that was the first noticeable incident of me having a stutter, and I guess it went downhill from there, and I stuttered a lot through the primary grades. We moved around a lot, we moved probably three times a year on average and so I was in a lot of different schools. So every time I arrived at a new school I’d have to introduce myself, so I’d stand up and say “I’m P-p-p-p-pat.” I really had a speech block, it wasn’t a ssssstutter, so my face would contort and the class would laugh, and that was my introduction. It got to be a repetitive thing. I felt stabilized throughout high school though, I stayed for three years at the same school and was able to make some friends, but I still had the speech block though.

Did you know anyone else with a stutter?

Absolutely nobody, other than this one night my family and I were traveling around the hills of California near the bay area where we lived, and we stopped at a gas station, it was out in the middle of nowhere, and this attendant who came up to the window, back then they used to pump gas for you and wash windows, and he stuttered very severely. He was the only one I really knew, and the big impression that I had, I was about 10 or so at the time, was that I knew why he was out there all by himself and didn’t insert himself into the broader lifestyle. He was just out here pumping gas, and I thought I don’t ever want to be entrapped like that. He was the only one I really knew at that age. The next one I met was when I was in my thirties in my work life, I met a guy who was in the Air Force, he stuttered very severely, nice guy, I admired him because he wasn’t afraid to get in and live life despite having a stutter.

So you were in the Air Force?

I worked with the Air Force as a civilian engineer, I started part way through college, and stayed in that field for the next 35 years, and had an enjoyable career.

So by the time you left high school, although you’d met a couple people who stutter, did you try to keep your stuttering under wraps, to keep it a secret as best you could?

Yes, unfortunately. This is what most stutterers do I’m sure. I was at Sacramento state college, and one of the classes I needed to take to graduate was a public speaking class, and I did not want to take that at all. In fact, I found a school that was in San Francisco that didn’t require public speaking to graduate, and I was determined to transfer schools just so I could get out of having to take that class. But I eventually decided not to transfer, and I just pushed through it.

In general, how do you feel about your stuttering now?

Well, it’s changed through the years. Back in my youth, it was a very large part of my existence, something that I did not want to have people know about me, and you know,  I wanted to have friends and to talk to people. After 50 years now, it’s gotten to be just who I am and I just need to be comfortable with myself. I started speech therapy about two or three years ago, and I have learned several good practices, like to announce the fact that I stutter, to advertise it from the start, which will really decrease my anxiety level because I don’t have to think about getting found out eventually because I’m found out at the very beginning. And I’m more comfortable with that. I’ll do this by throwing in some false stutters, believe it not, because if I don’t then I find myself just trying to hide the fact that I stutter. I realize that may sound strange. As far as speech therapy, I had about a month of it in high school, that’s really all I’ve ever had, so I’m what you look like if you go 71 years with practically zero speech therapy, you turn out like this, which I’m ok with.

You say that as if you think that you’d have much better speech if you had been to therapy for longer?

Yes, however I realize we moved around a lot so there wasn’t the stability there to have a continuous program, and I think that the methods they use now are much more effective, and I’ve read and learned that if you have speech therapy at age 5 or 6, through age 16 or so, 90 percent of those who stutter will improve their speech.

How do people typically react when they hear you stutter? Do you see any recurring reactions?

Well, since my stutter is more of a speech blockage, so when it is bad I just block up,  when the conversation comes to me, people think they have to jump in and speak for me or ask me what I want or whatever, but I really know what I want and I really know how to say it. With the speech therapy I’ve had in the last 3 years it’s gotten much easier. When I was young, the whole class would break out in laughter because I guess they had never seen or heard something like that before, and for other reasons I guess. As you get to be older, people begin to recognize what’s going on. Some are very attentive and listen, which causes me to not be speed stressed. If I feel like they’re not listening I have a real desire to be heard, to be understood, and that causes me to block up more. The other thing is that if you ssssstutter like that it actually advertises the fact that you stutter a lot better than if you block up like I do when people don’t really know what’s happening. In fact, I used to be involved in a volunteer service, there were about 80 men that I worked with, I worked there for about 3 years, and knew everyone in the group, and we would work together once a week for about 6 hours, about a month ago I was asked to give a little talk at the group, which I hadn’t really done before, and of course I noticeably had something different about my speech than others did, and afterwards one of the guys walked up to me and asked me if i had Parkinson’s disease. He had been afraid that something was about to happen to me. He was just really startled and didn’t know that I stuttered. And I had thought most of the people there already knew, as I had had opportunities to speak before, in small groups but never in front of everybody, and I had just thought it was obvious to everyone that I did, but not to him I guess. He had feared for me.

Linda (Patrick’s wife): I’ve heard you say that sometimes you can sense that people feel so uncomfortable with the sound of your stutter that they don’t seem to want to talk to you.

Patrick: All I’ve known my whole life is me, I’ve not been able to see me from another’s perspective, but it seems like there’s a number of people who don’t really want to speak with me because of the discomfort, which I can feel when I speak. They don’t want to listen, they don’t want to wait to hear my thoughts and words. I just have to accept that.

I think stuttering manifests in different patterns between people – some people have blocks, I have prolongations on s sounds. My first memory of having trouble with my speech was in front of my uncle, who I don’t know if my parents had told that I stuttered, and I was younger than 10 so I hadn’t started going to speech therapy yet. I was explaining to my uncle how to play a board game, and I’m forgetting what it was called but it involved a rattlesnake, and that sn sound in snake is one of my most difficult sounds to make. I’ve learned a couple tricks to say difficult words such as snake, but at the time I didn’t know those tricks, and I hadn’t even yet begun to come to terms with the fact that I had trouble with some words. So I was in the middle of the word snake, and I just kind of gave up. I was explaining, “so when you land on this space, a rattle-ssss….a rattle-ssssss…well, this little thing, (gesturing to a figure of a snake), bites you, and you miss a turn.” I realized there was a way out of my stutter by just pointing to the thing and avoiding the stutter. I would like to think that I don’t still avoid words but I think I still do. I don’t know about you, but I often want to be fluent and want to be seen as fluent, and this is somewhat achievable if I avoid certain words. But I don’t like that about the way I think about my speech. I’d rather just be totally comfortable with it, but I don’t think I’m quite there yet. Was there a time in your life when you thought, hey if I just avoid certain words, then people will see me as fluent and then everything will be ok?

I’m probably not smart enough to get by with changing words, I just kind of push through it and say the words I want to say, even at the discomfort of other people, through my being blocked up. My personality is more bullheaded I guess – I just try to say the words I want to say. One of the most profound things I’ve learned in the therapy I’ve had is by being videotaped I’ve seen myself speak and block up, and it seems like I’m not as bad as I think I am, you know we have all these stumbling blocks where we think we’re not perfect, but they aren’t as bad as we think they are.

There are a few analogies I think of when I come across a word I can’t say. One is you’re traveling along a road and then suddenly this gate goes down in front of you, and you can’t get through it right away, and you kind of have to wait for it to go up again and then you can proceed. Because one of the ways that I deal with words that are hard for me to say is to just pause. I’ve listened to voice recordings of myself and I’d say that more frequently than stutters on s sounds are pauses, which is just one way I’ve learned to deal with trouble words. Are there some strategies that you’ve learned to address your own particular kind of stutter?

Just to learn those techniques that I’ve learned recently, the main difficulty I’m working on right now isn’t the one on one speaking, it’s not even the public speaking, although I do block up when I speak in public. I’m supposed to give a presentation in about a month that’ll be about 40 minutes, and I’m actually looking forward to that, in fact, I enjoy doing that, but the main difficulty I have is speaking in small groups. We recently went to a gathering at a neighbors house where there were 8 or 10 couples there. In the beginning, before everyone had gotten there, when there were only about 4 or 5 of us, I was having no trouble keeping pace with and participating in the conversation. But later, as the group got larger, it became harder for me to speak up because I’d is about to say something and the conversation would be two or three thoughts beyond where I was. It’s hard for me to stay up with the conversation like that, for some reason. That’s my biggest issue right now that I’m working on.

Linda: I understand why that happens to you because when there are more people, everyone wants to give their version or their opinion, they want to say something about that topic, and they can just step in and interject quickly, which cuts you off.

Patrick: Unconsciously on their part.

Linda: It’s funny because that was happening to me last night also…

Patrick: Yeah, I noticed you started to speak once and someone changed the subject. With me, and my stuttering personality if you will, that would offend me, because they talked over me, and you know, my standard reaction is to be upset about that, and I need not be, and I’ve learned not to be so much. It’s just part of the dynamics of speaking.

Linda: I think it’s a nature of the size of the group, we’re all talking about a topic and everyone has something to contribute and we’re all waiting our turn, which is harder for you, but it does happen to everybody else. Someone would want to say something and someone else would start speaking.

Patrick: And there’s more fluent people and more fluent thinkers too who are able to jump out faster with their thoughts, and you feel sort of left behind.

It’s interesting you said there are more fluent speakers and more fluent thinkers as well, do you think your stutter impacts the fluency with which you think?

Patrick: I think there’s a natural tendency I have to be more thoughtful and ponder things before I say them and maybe think of the right words to say too, and I have more of a tendency to be slower to jump in.

I think everyone wants to be heard and understood. I often get in my head about my speech, that because I have a problem with some words, that therefore there is something wrong with my thinking. When I come across a word that I have trouble with, then my mind goes from just the normal flow of thinking of a word and saying it and moving through that thought, it goes from that to an intense focus on just getting through that word, and I become distracted by myself.

Linda: It becomes a stumbling block.

Exactly, and that is exhausting, for my mental energy to be constantly diverted.

Patrick: One of the issues that I’ve dealt with is that, and this may not sound right, but one of the pet names my dad had for me when I was a boy was “stupid.” That’s been a real thing for me to try and advance myself. In my career, I reached the top rung in my field at the time, and it was kind of a selfish urge I guess to prove myself. That’s not the major reason I achieved those things, I just wanted to be doing things at that level, but it’s also been a selfish urge to shine and not be that person I was called out to be as a kid.

Are there other traits that you think you developed in part due to having a stutter – I mean it’s hard to say if you would have developed them if you didn’t have a stutter – but are their traits that you in part attribute to having a stutter?

Patrick: Probably, I think I act more reserved than I really am inside, I think I’m kind of a closet extrovert, but just don’t act that way outwardly.

Linda: I don’t see that closet extrovert in you, I just see you out there plowing your way through life, almost to say, I’m going to do this and no one is going to stop me.

Patrick: Well that may be what comes across.

Linda, when you first met Patrick, did you notice that he had a stutter right away?

Linda: I probably realized it the first time I talked to him. When we were 19, I saw him as a good looking person to go after, and the speech had nothing to do with how I was looking at him, I saw other things that I liked about him that were stronger than the speech.

Patrick: We first met in the 6th grade, then my family and I moved away for a while, but we eventually moved back and my family bought a house next door to hers. We didn’t live in that house, we just had it fixed up and re-sold it, but that’s when we met again, and later we got married.

Linda: I saw him as someone intelligent and smart and that was attractive to me.

So it didn’t matter that he stuttered?

Linda: No. But not everybody thinks the way I do. Some people look on the outside and judge a person by how they look or how they talk, but I was seeing someone for how they were on the inside.

Patrick: I think at the time I had a pretty profound block.

Linda: Yeah I think it was more pronounced then. You’ve done very well, as you’ve gotten older. You’ve overcome a lot as far as your stutter goes, and you’ve just learned how to live with it. I think perhaps some people see stuttering as a stumbling block but it has become a stepping stone in your case, and I think it can go either way depending on how you approach it. You just keep plugging along, trying to do your best.

Patrick: Everyone has some kind of struggle, and ours is just more visible. Some people have diabetes, some people are blind, some people have high blood pressure. Everyone has something that they’re dealing with, and our difficulties are just more recognized the instant we meet somebody. I remember this one time I was at a conference back in Washington Dc, and it was a group of about a hundred of us from around the world in my career field. There were several Air Force generals there, and this one general I had known for several years was leading the meeting, and at the beginning he had everyone introduce themselves around the room. When it got to me I could not say my name, and it was must have been 30 seconds but it felt like 30 minutes, and finally, he introduced my name for me. When you’re 35 years old, and you cannot say your own name, you’re wondering to yourself, what do they think of me? The next day I gave a talk, which was about an hour long, and I started off by saying, “My name is P_________ P__________ (See I’m having trouble saying it right now) P______ Patrick McReaken, and I finally remembered my name,” and everyone laughed, and that got me through the embarrassment. But the previous night I was just shattered.

How often does that happen, where you’ll be at some event, where you have a pretty significant block, and later, maybe hours later, you’ll still be thinking about it?

Patrick: Quite a bit, to be honest. I’ll have a bad event – that was worst I’ve ever had, the one I just described – where I just block up and feel really less than normal, less than capable, and I’ll come home and she’ll see me sulking. But overnight, it’s a new day and I’m good again. You like to think that you can stand anything, but it still does grieve me at times.

Linda: I think everybody is given a weakness or several weaknesses and there’s purpose behind it, and maybe none of us like our own weaknesses, but I don’t think we would want to trade with anybody. I guess that’s why we are given our weaknesses because it’s going to help us to be better overall in life. I don’t think I would want to stutter and I don’t think he would want to have my weakness. I’m always sticking my foot in my mouth, I’m always saying the wrong thing and embarrassing myself, and I know he wouldn’t want to do that, I know he would probably rather stutter than do that.

Patrick: I can live with stuttering [they both laugh].