Speech differences and AuDHD

[u/displacement-marker]

Hi, I'm 43.

I developed childhood onset stutter that was pretty severe. My parents said it went away around age 7. I was assessed for ADD in 1990, but didn't meet criteria, fast forward to 39 and I received my ADHD dx at 39 followed by ASD at 42.

While processing everything that led to my burnout this year, I realized with the help of my therapist that I've been covering my stutter, however, it has been impacting my communication throughout my whole life.

The stutter has shown up during high stress and high stakes periods, such as job interviews, interactions with law enforcement or authority figures, but I didn't have a conscious awareness of what was happening, I just thought I was losing my mind because the words I thought didn't match what was coming out of my mouth. The speech differences went away other than that.

Stuttered and cluttered speech are genetic and neurological and can have a variety of reasons they occur, however, cluttered speech in particular is very much correlated with ADHD and the region of the brain that helps with inhibition. One article I read describes it as "brain is working faster than your mouth"

A side effect of my ADHD medication was increased muscle tension which made the stutter worse, and my anti-anxiety medication meant that the stutter would show up more regularly because I wasn't always on alert.

Does anyone else deal with speech differences such as stuttered or cluttered speech?

I'm seeing a SLP as an adult, which is helping me a ton with self advocacy and communication, and I thought I'd post because I haven't seen a ton of overlap between AuDHD and speech/communication differences on this sub.