OBSERVATIONS by Jake Dean

If you’ve ever wondered whether the blocking behaviors associated with stuttering are present in other performance activities, this golf story should win you over. Jake is a freshman at Cornell University in Ithica, New York.

Hello, I am a freshman at Cornell, and I have had a problem with blocking in my speech for about six years. I read your article, and it really applied to me.

I am working with some counselors on campus right now to try and make some progress. When I am alone (as the case with many people) everything is fine, but the moment I have to talk to people, things get all tight, much like the isolated incident you were talking about when you were in San Francisco, except my incidents are not isolated. They are ongoing all day.

It is not very noticeable to other people, but it frustrates me. I look ahead to words that I am going to say, and when I do, I always stop before them. Something really interesting, though, is I had the SAME EXACT thing happen to my golf swing.

I started playing golf competitively at age 12, and I started to care about the result of each shot. I developed this habit of going up to the ball and setting up to it and not being able to pull the club back. It felt as though my arms were frozen and could not move at all.

Eventually the feeling would lessen, and I could just barely get the shot off, but I was not playing to my full potential.

Another interesting point is that when there was no ball there, I could take a swing without a block, which is sort of analogous to the fact that I can speak with no blocks when there are no people around.

The spring of my senior year in high school, I went out to the driving range and I said to myself, “Wow, this does not matter anymore,” because I knew I was not going to play golf in college. And those feelings just stopped immediately. I could now control my mind and choose what I wanted to think about.

I have not had that block happen in a full year now. That was pretty remarkable because for six years with my golf it happened on every single shot. I really think there is a link with that and my stuttering, and several psychologists have told me I have an obsessive-compulsive personality.