The One & Only Record from 1971
I have virtually no contemporaneous notes written at the time about how I got better, except one I located decades ago. For decades, I had no intention of ever going public with the details of my stuttering as I felt too ashamed. In the meantime, I lost track of the details in this note. But finally, on Wednesday September 27 2023, I carefully studied word for word this note written in a scribbler on November 22 1971. In its own quiet, beautiful way it describes one example of the entire healing process the day after it happened. This note was written with a ballpoint pen, where the first draft is the last and final draft. Like all my first drafts it is inelegant. It describes the remarkable revolutionary project, when my stuttering in reading at mass went from ‘way out of control’ to ‘almost nil’. And in reading and rereading this note, I find myself feeling stunned by the force of the words in it. For these 1971 words have given me a huge boost in confidence, that where it really matters in writing recently on the subject of my stuttering, I have accurately written what really happened to me half a century ago. With one notable exception. This note suggests the feeling of self hatred felt during a stuttering context makes the stuttering problem even worse; whereas in everything I have written on the subject so far, I have treated the feeling of self hatred as neutral in that regard. Here is that contemporaneous note:
“Remarkable week. I’ve started a project which seems to have revolutionized everything... The basic experience occurred yesterday Nov 21... I had noticed a remarkable dynamic in my reading at mass. When I got up, I was aware that my self hatred was causing my inadequacy to go way out of control. So I opened myself to the suffering & focused on the feeling which, like self hate, lies deep in my subConscious that I am lovable. In embracing the suffering, I find myself passing from withdrawl → presence & in the case of stammering the suffering has been reduced to almost nil but at the same time I’ve thrown away my defences—no slow and low stuff.”
Looking back at this note now, after many drafts and redrafts, this is how I read it today.
“It’s been a remarkable week. I have started a project which seems to have revolutionized everything. The basic experience occurred again yesterday on Sunday November 21 at mass. I had previously noticed during this project a remarkable dynamic in my reading at mass. When I got up to read, I was aware that the feeling of self hatred I was experiencing at the time was causing my feelings of inadequacy, due to stammering, to go way out of control. So to deal with these way out of control feelings, I first opened myself to the suffering caused by feeling self hate, and I then focused on the feeling, which like self hate, lies deep within my subconscious self, that I am lovable. In openly embracing the presence of suffering caused by my stammering, instead of withdrawing and trying to run away from my stammering, I have thrown away all the defensive strategies I have used to try and stop it, such as speaking more slowly and more softly. Despite having thrown away my defences, in the case of my stammering, it has been reduced to almost nil.”
Comments
As I read the text looking for emotional clues, what struck me in terms of ‘shock and awe’ was that there was lots of ‘awe’ but no ‘shock’. This tells me that November 21 1971 was not the first time during the previous week that my making contact with the feeling ‘I am lovable’ had led to the words which I was reading to flow freely. Had it been the first time, my scribbler response would have been emotionally over the top, reflecting the shock relating to what had just happened for the very first time. Since November 21 was not the first day this had happened, it would appear that the dam was about to burst when I wrote this note, as by that time, other than a bit of practice, no further steps were needed. Thus it is likely that the day my problems with stuttering all ended in triumph occurred before the month of November 1971 ended. That day, whenever it was, would have produced the biggest ‘shock and awe’ in my entire life.
In the 1971 text, I said ‘almost’ nil because I didn’t yet believe what had just happened, where the words flowed freely as I was reading them, especially since it occurred at the same time where I did not intervene in any defensive way whatsover to try and stop my stammering. From this point on, it was simply a matter of again repeating and successfully completing this same exercise just a few more times, until the moment when I was hit with the glorious realization that stammering—a word used in Britain but known in Canada as stuttering—was for me completely over. That’s when ‘almost nil’ became ‘nil’. And has remained so.
After effects of September 27, 2023
During the last 3 days of September, I have no idea of the number of times I wept tears of intense consolation, every time I read and re-read these precious words “So I opened myself to the suffering & focused on the feeling which, like self hate, lies deep in my subconscious that I am lovable.... & in the case of stammering the suffering has been reduced to almost nil.” I mean those words and the other words in the note held all of the necessary ingredients which would very soon enable me to get better, starting with my asking myself ‘what/how am I presently feeling?’ For the results of that particular inquiry led to the discovery of the deep subconscious—or as I now prefer to say—the unconscious feeling of self-hatred and the unconscious feeling that ‘I am lovable’. From an emotional standpoint, in 2023 I was experiencing these words written on November 22 1971 for the very first time in life. The consolation felt over those 3 days in September 2023 was almost as intense as the day the dam broke in 1971, when I realized that my stuttering had come to an end.
Yet when all of these intense emotions had finally run their course by the beginning of October 2023, I found I was left feeling more embarrassed than ever. I had always thought it had taken only 2 months to get better, that is in November and December 1971. That in itself was embarrassing enough, as I felt or thought ‘how can that be?’ With something as painful as stuttering, which I had experienced over about 15 years where, from time to time, I had felt intense agony and despair, surely it couldn’t be over that quickly? But in light of this recent discovery, the truth of the matter seems to be that it had only taken about half that time, or about 1 month, to get better! Now that is just beyond the pale...
Appendix
Comparison Between the 1971 version and the 2023 version:
“1. Old: Remarkable week. I’ve started a project which seems to have revolutionized everything... The basic experience occurred yesterday Nov 21... I had (overwriting the word ‘have’) noticed a remarkable dynamic in my reading at mass.
New: “It’s been a remarkable week. I have started a project which seems to have revolutionized everything. The basic experience occurred again yesterday on Sunday November 21 at mass. I had previously noticed during this project a remarkable dynamic in my reading at mass.
2. Old: When I got up I was aware that my self hatred was causing my inadequacy to go way out of control.
New: When I got up to read, I was aware that the feeling of self hatred I was experiencing at the time was causing my feelings of inadequacy, due to stammering, to go way out of control.
3. Old: So I opened myself to the suffering & focused on the feeling which, like self hate, lies deep in my subConscious that I am lovable.
New: So to deal with these way out of control feelings, I first opened myself to the suffering caused by feeling self hate, and I then focused on the feeling, which like self hate, lies deep within my subconscious self, that I am lovable.
4. Old: In embracing the suffering I find myself passing from withdrawl (sic) → presence & in the case of stammering the suffering has been reduced to almost nil but at the same time I’ve thrown away my defences—no slow and low stuff.
New: In openly embracing the presence of suffering caused by my stammering, instead of withdrawing and trying to run away from my stammering, I have thrown away all the defensive strategies I have used to try and stop it, such as speaking more slowly and more softly. Despite having thrown away my defences, in the case of my stammering, it has been reduced to almost nil.”
The two ‘......’ areas at the very beginning were brief references to my former fiancée. This scribbler was all about the pain I went through when my former fiancée dumped me. This note on my stuttering was a rare bright light shining in the darkness that most of 1971 enveloped me in.
Correction: In my article ‘My Name...My Name...My Name is Don McLean’, the words “...in teaching myself how to better speak with and to others” should be deleted. At no time in my life did I ever “teach myself” anything which enabled me to get better. I learned a lot as a result of my three indispensable decisions. But my stammering getting better was pure hand of God good fortune.
Don McLean
October 10, 2023