#39 On The Other Side with Matthew Bernucca
“I believe that people can get to where they want to get to with their stutter.”
BIO
Matthew Bernucca is from Tampa, Florida but have spent the last 11 years in New York City. He graduated from the International Center of Photography in 2017 and has been pursuing a career in photography ever since. www.matthewbernucca.com He co-lead the Brooklyn chapter NSA support group.
Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. You can also watch the interview on YouTube.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
0:00 - 0:36 Intro
0:36 - 7:44 Teasers
7:44 - 1:03:39 Covert Stutterer
1:03:39 - 1:05:36 Last Words
MORE QUOTES
“When you're around people who stutter and you watch the way they stutter confidently, your shame starts to flip in into pride. I think pride and shame are basically complete opposites. And then all of a sudden you go to a conference or wherever you go and it starts to flip.” - Matthew Bernucca
“I used to let my stutter make a lot of decisions for me and those decisions started to become unconscious. One of the biggest ones was that I convinced myself that I was an introvert and that I didn't need to have a lot of social interaction to have like a healthy life. It's not true about me at all. I love people.” - Matthew Bernucca
TRANSCRIPTION:
Uri Schneider: Look at that. If you're making your list and checking it twice, we are happy that you're taking a few minutes to, to join us here. My name's Uri Schneider. at Schneider speech. We got a bunch of people here for what's gonna be one of the, one of the amazing conversations that's gonna take us into the end of this wild year of 2020 and, uh, launch us forward.
Matthew Bea is with us this morning, so excited. Matt, thanks for taking the time. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Um, hang in afterwards, I'll just mention a couple teaser. First of all, we had this Air AirPods giveaway, so we were looking for people to share highlights of these conversations. This is our 39th conversation.
It's amazing. It took us this long to get Matthew to come. Happy. He agreed, but he's a busy guy and, and we're grateful that he stepped in. And you're gonna, you're gonna be better off for it. But for those of you that, that did submit, we didn't forget about you. And today would be a great day to do the drawing.
So after this Facebook live, maybe like 15 minutes after, we're gonna do like a live drawing with like a wheel of fortune of all the names of people that submitted. And the winner's gonna be coming up. Can't wait to see that. And then we've got this transcending stuttering. Uh, you can sign up for the free emails and if you're interested in any of the groups, either for professionals who wanna learn about how to be supportive, helpful, and real change agents, both in their own lives and in the work we do, as well as if there are teens and adults who stutter, who are looking for a group experience, or just assign it for free emails of insights and tips and connectivity, check it out Schneider speech.com/tsa.
And with that, we are live with Mr. Perrier. Mr. Pellegrino, straight up. The, the creative spirit of this guy is incredible. And do you wanna know what I remember from our first meeting?
Matt Bernucca: Absolutely, absolutely. I, I remember
Uri Schneider: it. So there were three of us in the room. It was you, me and the inedible, uh, Malka Burton, who is mm-hmm.
watching, uh, hey Malka. And, um, tried to get her to come on, but she wasn't pull it off. But she is absolutely with us here in, in more ways than one. And I just remember, I can honestly say Matt, I've never met a person who was so aware, articulate, in touch with the inner landscape. And I think most people go through life, you know, futzing around and feeling frustrated or, or struggling or whatever.
Just not, not really finding their flow because they're dealing with a lot of external stuff and they don't have a sense of. , what makes them tick and what are some of the things that come up as interference potentially for themselves and how have past stories kind of keep bumping into the present and, and what kind of things they have that they can lean on as assets.
And I just remember being struck how articulate you were and, and that I knew at that first meeting that, that that asset of your familiarity and, and courage to go and know your inner space and, and, and give us a chance to go there with you to trust us and invite us in, in that delicate personal journey.
I just knew at that moment that great things would happen. So that's what I remember. That's
Matt Bernucca: nice. That's really nice. Yeah. That was a great day.
Uri Schneider: So yeah. What would, uh, yeah, I sent you an email. We, we, we, um, we've shared a lot. Uh, we shared an amazing conference together. I know. Now you're a co. Leader of the Brooklyn chapter of the National Stuttering Association meetings.
Yes. Um, New York City has an amazing, vibrant stuttering community. You should tap into that. I refer people all the time, send them the links, and it's just amazing the journey that you've had. So I thought maybe if you wanna just bring people in, what do you think people would appreciate knowing? What would you appreciate sharing?
Yeah. Um,
Matt Bernucca: well, I, the way I, the, the way I think about stuttering now is I feel like in a lot of ways I'm on the other side of it. Um, it used to sort of play my life and I thought no one suffered as much as I did. And like, um, so yeah, like every, like negative stuttering, like side effect you could have. I had.
And um, I would obsess over it. But yeah, so now I'm on the other side of that, and now I. I want everyone who is still on that side to come over to this side, . So that's sort of, um, I try to like, I try to like live my life in that way. I want to um, I want to like let people who stutter know, who are having a hard time with it, that it's like, not that you can, you can get, I wanna select my words.
Well you , we have plenty of time. You're able to, I believe that people can get to where they want to get to with their stutter. That's what I think. And yeah. And so, I mean, I guess I can talk about how I got to Schneider's speech and then what happened and then where I am today if, if that makes sense. Um, ,
Uri Schneider: listen, everything will make sense after we go there.
Um, , I think if you can add specificity, you know, we understand each other's frequencies, but when you talk about the two sides, I think it's helpful for people to see you today and understand what yeah. What that earlier experience and relationship with that stuttering was. Absolutely. And what was there.
Because I think there are people that are there and just knowing they're not the only ones and that they're not freaks that they're experiencing feeling, thinking or going through really, you know, challenging stuff. And then to know that you're someone that experienced some of those things and that you're, where you're at on that journey is a sign I think of hope for a lot of individuals for like parents.
So my hope is that this conversation will give honest, candid insight into openness. The good, the bad, the ugly, and then some of the upside, once you get to a stronger place. And the hope and the promise that no matter where you are, you're not alone. No matter where you are, you shouldn't feel that.
There's no hope. Everything's open, Matt, wherever you wanna go with it. And, uh, we won't, we won't talk golf too much
Matt Bernucca: don't get me started on golf, uh, . Um, so, uh, yeah, so I'll talk about what the two sides are and the side that I spent most of my life on most of my life was spent being in, in denial about my stutter.
Um, so I didn't give it a ton of thought. Um, and that has a, had a lot to do with me repressing it and burying it really deep. Um, I had done various speech therapies when I was a child and nothing really. , they would like be like, you just need to breathe. And it's like, I'm breathing. So I don't know , like what that's supposed to do.
And um, I think when I started to get into my mid twenties, um, it became, it became a problem. It started to, I, I still wasn't fully conscious of stuttering and stuttering in my life because at the time, what I was doing is I was doing, I was a covert stutterer, which if people don't know what that means, that means you hide your stutter and you use various tactics to hide your stutter.
So you switch words. That's the main thing. Movie is a word that I stutter on a lot. I just stuttered on it right there. My blocks are long and silent. So what I would do is instead of using the word movie, I would say film. And I, and I was always like, Sound like such a, like a, like a snob saying word film.
I don't wanna say it, but like, that's just like sort of like one of the things that you would do. And there's also, there's not like selling out,
Uri Schneider: selling out on your word choice for the sake of hiding the stutter at all costs, even if you didn't like either it was a too sophisticated of a word. Yeah. Too sophisticated or, or a lesser right.
A lesser good word. But it was like, I'll do anything to hide and not let someone find out that
Matt Bernucca: I get stuck. Yeah. And it, you, you use a variety of techniques and tactics and at the end of the day or at the end of the month, it all pulls you farther and farther away from yourself. And I think it does a great deal of, um, emotional damage on stutterer.
Um, and yeah, so it was just years and years of, um, being completely in denial about my stutter. and I was in psycho-analysis and that's when I started to open the can of Worms, which is my stutter. And I basically had like, I don't know, like a two year long crisis over my speech. Um, and we got to the point in my therapy that the theme was if I could get my life better, like if I could be a more, I guess, honest version of myself or deal with past conflicts or strength in relationships in my life, then my stutter would go away.
And I believed that in long story short, five years of therapy, which did a great deal, amount of good for me, but that wasn't the case. And I just, I just realized that wasn't true. and um, I was still so distraught over my speech and still hiding it and being covert and that's when I was like, I don't, I sort of was like, now I don't know what to do anymore.
So I was like, I guess I'll go back to speech therapy. It didn't work as a kid. Why would it work now? But I don't, I don't know what else. And so I Do you mean
Uri Schneider: to say like you were deep in psychotherapy and the message you were given, or the story you were running was If we sort out all these social emotional psycho, you know, psychodynamic things, speech will sort itself out.
It, it's really all sitting on top of stuff that's psychosocial emotional stuff. Um, and then at a certain point you got to a feeling like, I don't think, you know, this could be helpful, but I don't know if the two are, are linked
Matt Bernucca: like that. Yeah. Yes. That is correct. Yeah. Um, and I'll talk more about that later.
I'll come back to that. But, um, but yeah, so I called Schneider speech and we had that first meeting that you spoke about and, um, and yeah, I mean, and then that it was sort of like that I think that was like the beginning of the end like, for me, I guess. Um, yeah, and I mean, I, I guess what does that mean?
What does that mean?
Uri Schneider: I mean, ahead? Well,
Matt Bernucca: I guess I'll talk about that whole process. Um, I began speech therapy with Malka and um, it's funny, I've never actually talked out loud about this whole thing. Um, I mean, it was probably one of the most, it was. . Um, it was such a formative time for me, so I, I, um, I was, I was not educated about stuttering whatsoever.
It's funny, you can, you can do, you can live your whole life at something and really not know anything about, it's sort of silly and I didn't know anything about, I didn't even know what covert was. I know that I was covert, but I didn't, I didn't know it had a word. All I know in my head was, oh, I switched words.
I didn't know anything about it. So you learn a lot about stuttering and at the time, I think what I wanted is, I guess, I don't know, I guess I wanted a cure or something. I don't really know what I was looking for. I just wanted like relief somehow and, um, and. You know, therapy, it's funny, like therapy is, it's hard to put therapy into words, but I think I went into it not knowing what I really wanted.
I didn't have a specific goal. I just knew that stuttering was sort of like tearing apart my life. It felt like , honestly. Like I wasn't, I did not have the tools. I had zero tools to handle stuttering, and Malka I think was just unbelievably patient with me. I think I was, I think I came to Malka at a pretty volatile time in my life.
I definitely cried in the first meeting that we had. I, I know I did that and I think I, I cried other times with her too. It was,
it was intense. And so, um, I mean long, I mean, To make a long story short, Margo was unbelievably patient with me and she didn't point me in any really direction. Like we didn't go heavy techniques. She gave me everything and I think I had the choice of what I wanted to do. And she was, I mean, she's the most patient person that I've ever met, and she has taught me more about patience than anyone.
And um,
Uri Schneider: she's, she's, she just dropped a comment, she wrote great conversation. You are real as ever. , I'm hanging on to every word, .
Matt Bernucca: That's what she does. Yeah. I miss her a lot. She's really special. And, um, I, I think one of the most important parts of my therapy is that early on Maka would sort of like softball me and idea she would be like, do you, do you think that you would want to go to.
a stuttering support group. And I almost laughed out loud. I laughed. I I, I probably did laugh out loud. I was like, no way. Because I think there's something that the, the general public doesn't know if you, if you are not accepting of your stutter or if you are not in, have a good mental approach to your stutter.
There's something that happens where you don't like to watch other people stutter. And that was a thing that was a theme throughout my life. It didn't happen a lot, but there would be times where I was in, in a classroom where I would see someone stutter and I would like, my whole body would be like on fire.
Like I couldn't watch it. And I think all that means is that it's just a reflection of yourself and you're looking at a mirror basically, and you. Yeah. And so you're not able to do it yet. And she, I think there's, there's like videos that she would show me on the iPad and like, um, they would be like short documentaries about stuttering or they would be like, behind the scenes at the National Stuttering Association conference.
And I would, we would only get so far into them until I would make her turn it off. Like, I can't, I can't, I, I can't. And, um, but, and she would be like, and then she would like softball me this idea. She's like, oh, like there's a National Centering Association conference that happens and it's like 800 people who stutter in one place.
And I'd be like, no way. I'm not going. That's crazy. Why would you even suggest that? But, and she would never, she would never like force it. She was always, I felt like what I wanted was always the priority. And um, and you know, so we would do like technique stuff. I would like go home. I, I forget what we would do.
I would like read a page of something and I would have to like focus on certain words, I forget. But then there was something that helped me a lot and I think this is really important for people who are beginning their like, stuttering journey or whatever you wanna say. I had a graph and I just wanna
Uri Schneider: add also for people that wanna be helpers.
I think when you listened to Matt, um, if you met Matt on that day, I think most people would be, I. overwhelmed and wouldn't know where to begin because prison starts crying with you. Prison starts crying with you. The first thing a therapist tends to do is wanna make him feel better. Oh, don't cry, sweetheart.
You know, like we're used to trying to not hold space with the, with the unpleasant feelings. And I think like the things you're sharing, Matt, there's like, there's so many pieces there and you're so good at facilitating that with others and you're sharing how helpful it was for you. So I just want don't think if you're not a person who stutters, this isn't for you if you're a parent, a teacher, or a professional, everything's matched sharing, I think, or really lessons for us to think how do we respond when someone shows up?
With past failure, with all kinds of beliefs of what they can or can't do. Or you make an offer and you think the best thing for, you go to a self-help meeting and they laugh in your face and you're like, no, no, no. You gotta go. I'm gonna make you go. I'm gonna, I'm gonna force you to go. Yeah. On the other hand, the patience, that was the virtue that you brought at, it wasn't that Malaka was the most talented, had the most CEUs, or paid the most in professional development.
Not to say she doesn't, but the thing that makes you great, the thing that makes a person able to create change or give space for change is creating space for the other person in time and in holding all the emotions and all, all the untucked stuff, right. And being able to tolerate that. So I just want to amplify that the value of what you're sharing is good for everyone to listen and really take ied.
I'm,
Matt Bernucca: I'm, I'm glad you said that because I mean that I take that time with maka, with me. every day. I think about it every day because, because I, I don't think, I believe that I could change. And so because she helped me change so much, um, and she showed me what to do, um, that was like, oh, okay. I need to listen to what's going on here, , and what did she do to help me get here, because that is a valuable lesson that I need to take with me.
So, um, but yeah. Um,
Uri Schneider: let me riff on that, Matt. I'm gonna riff on that for one second and then I'm gonna let you go. Unplugged. Yeah, that is something I highlighted in the email I just sent out two days ago. If you didn't get it, drop your name in the chat here or something. Or just join our website. Website and sign up for the emails.
I said the following, I said, this year has been a challenging year for everyone. I am no exception. It has been an extremely challenging year. I have a dear family member that just got off event. Thank God. People on our team had family members that dealt with covid in very intense ways. Thankfully, many recovered other people's livelihood organizations.
Everything has been challenging. We've all gone through that. What I wrote was, if we got this far into 2020, we earned a badge. We can call ourselves survivors. And um, we made it. And whether it was pretty or not, I always say like, I ski, I play basketball. I just get it done. It's not pretty. But if I get to the bottom of the hill, I got it done.
We won't go to the golfing cause I don't get it done . But if you got to this point, if you're listening to this talk at the end of 2020, you are a bonafide survivor and, and you have discovered things inside yourself at the beginning of 2020 or at December 24th, 2019, you did not know you had flexibility, courage, strength, creativity, problem solving.
There are things we all. Exposed and brought into reality this year that we didn't know we had. And in a way, I think that in the journey, Matt, what you're talking about is, like I said, the first day I met you, I believed you were gonna win. I knew you were gonna make it. And you didn't yet know that. And you didn't want to hear that.
Like you, that wasn't where you were at. But that's what Mel and I, I wanted to get that sincerely. Yeah, you would. That would've sent you the other way. Yeah. But we held that till you believed it and now you run with it independently. And like I say, you hire us on day one and our, our greatest achievement is if you fire us, cuz you no longer need us to kindle your flame.
You're, you're on your own. So, so I just wanna say holding faith in people and, and, and young people especially, you know, someone's finding their way and like I said, it looks messy, but that's part of the evolution, that's part of the process of the growth and flourishing and, and unfolding. So I just wanna say holding that hope, even when people don't want to hear it, you don't need to convince them of it.
You just need to keep holding that for them. That hope, that faith, that belief, they're gonna find their way and at some point something happens. Yeah. And, and they'll never, you know, they'll never be able to know how hopeful that
Matt Bernucca: was. Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah. So there was, um, I think it was about a quarter away through speech therapy.
Um, Malka gave me this piece of paper and I would rate my stutter every day, or no, I'm sorry, the next, so if, if it was Tuesday, I would wake up and I would rate what my stutter was on Monday, and I believe it was one would be, yeah, one is like fluent and then 10 would be like, like you can't get a word out all day.
Uri Schneider: And so I, I probably would flip it where I think like 10 is like, Words are just flowing like water. Oh, 10 is always like, yeah, generally what we, how
Matt Bernucca: the chart works. But I would like make a little dot. What did that do for
Uri Schneider: you? What did that mean
Matt Bernucca: for you? I, you know what I'm, I think it grounded me somehow.
It, it, it stopped my stutter from being so mysterious. And a stutter is a mysterious mystery and is a part of stuttering. Um, sometimes we just have no idea what's going on. Um, but, and you can also see like patterns, and I'm like hesitant to use that word. But there, I, you know, I would go through these, like, these like highs and lows of, of like fluency and then disfluency.
Um, and I loved it and I would, I didn't wanna have a day without that chart. And I felt like it really. Grounded me. Um, I don't know, maybe it sort of like kept me thinking about the next day and like how it can change cuz like it can sort of change like that, at least my stutter does. Um, I've, I've, uh, I would call my stutter erratic.
I go through like periods of like great DYS fluency and then I go through fluency. It's sort of weird. Um, yeah. And, but then during this whole time, Malka is still sort of like patiently soft balling me suggestions of like, Hey, do you wanna watch this
video of someone stuttering? Or how about a support group? And she would sort of like, talk about the, the conference to me a lot. And then it got to a point where I was like, okay, I'm 50 50. I, I don't know if I can handle it, but like maybe I should go and. I made the decision to go, I think a week and a half before the conference, and I went and like, on like, my whole life changed.
So, I mean, that was sort of like, that was sort of it, pretty much. Um, so
Uri Schneider: let's, let's unpack that for a second. It's a week. Yeah. A week and a half before, and you're still hell bent on not coming. You're actually giving her a thousand reasons why it's a bad idea. Yeah. And then you take the plunge. And I recall, I recall as we went to the conference, you know, the, um, the feeling like you're being a big mistake.
What were you thinking? And then I remember going to the conference and I remember sitting in the hall with my dad, we were talking with Ruben Chuff, and you were in your room like wondering like, what's next? , maybe you wanna go there because it it, it's not like you arrived at in Chicago, was it Chicago?
Mm-hmm. . It wasn't like you landed at O'Hare and you were like, bring it on. No,
Matt Bernucca: I had, I had no idea what to think. I was, I was completely, it was, I was like a fish out of water in every sense of the word. I had zero idea what to think. I'd never really been around people who stuttered and I didn't know what to do or how to be.
And, um, but I mean, that's, see that, see that's the thing is like, this is something I'm about to say something that I wouldn't have wanted to hear when I was not feeling great about my stutter. And one of the great things about having a stutter is you have this, like, you have, I, I mean, I'll use the word family, but like, you, you have this family out there.
You have, there are other people who have gone through the exact same things you have and the way that you, the feeling of being around other people who stutter is incredibly powerful. And you feel it pretty quickly, . So once I got in there and I started experiencing that feeling, I mean, it just sort of like, it just crescendos from there, you know?
And like you're, it's like all of a sudden you have all these new friends. ,
Uri Schneider: can I, can I share with you something Mal just messaged me to say, yeah, she said, do you remember how dramatically he responded when she showed you a video, uh, from the NSA homepage? Do you remember what you said? How much, what you just said was something you weren't ready to hear?
Do you know what
Matt Bernucca: you said? No. What did I say? ? That it wasn't this,
Uri Schneider: this, I, I, I wanna be careful. I don't want this to be a trigger for anybody, but I want it to be real. You know, you, you basically said if I stuttered like that person, do you remember what
Matt Bernucca: you said? No, I don't remember. What did I said? No, you said
Uri Schneider: I, I think I'd rather end my life if I stuttered like
Matt Bernucca: that.
Really? I said that you said no. Wow. And then you
Uri Schneider: watched, you watched, you watched the video. You watched the video. I'm talking about softball, hardball, I don't know. You know, above par. Below par. She said you watched the video together and you talked about Wow, that person is stuttering like a lot and he seems so at ease with it.
And if it was me, I would be like, beside my, you said, you know, you'd be beside you and then you started to consider going it, that that was from what molecule remembers. That was a, a moment. I dunno if you remember that at all. Yeah. Um,
Matt Bernucca: I don't remember that specific moment, but I remember watching a lot of people stuttering and being really overwhelmed by it.
Um, yeah. Um, Yeah. You know, and so you go to
Uri Schneider: the conference and everything changes. I, I, I took you off, off course, but I wanted to incorporate Monica's question, but Yeah. And then
Matt Bernucca: talk about that. I think what happens is that like, I think, um, a big part of stuttering is shame. And the shame I think begins at a young age or whenever you begin to stutter.
There's so much shame around stuttering if you're not accepting of your stutter. And shame is very, uh, it can be hard to tame and your shame can envelop you and it can grow into other things. And, um, and, uh, it gets, it fills you. And you don't, you don't want to be filled with shame because nothing good is gonna come from that.
And then what happens is when you're around people who stutter, um, and you, you watch people stutter and you watch the way they stutter and you watch them stutter with confidence and their, your shame starts to flip in into pride. Cause I think pride and shame are basically complete opposites. And then all of a sudden, this thing that you've had shame in your whole life, you go to a conference or wherever you go and then it starts to flip.
And, um, I think that's the big, that's probably the beginning of it. And you start to chisel away at all of these negative feelings and emotions and experiences that you have generated over your whole life. Um, receiving and causing yourself shame from stuttering and, um, and um, yeah. Yeah. And
it took me, I wasn't like, it wasn't like a immediate change for me. The conference is like very intense because you make a world, you make a world of people who stutter for four days and it's amazing. And I love the fact that I can even be involved in that. So now the thing is, is I'm proud to stutter.
And one of the reasons I'm proud of stutter is cuz I'm in, I can go to a world, I can like make this this amazing world that other people can't make. And I don't wanna, like, I, I don't wanna like tear down regular people, , but I'm sorry, like regular people, they can't, they can't do that. Like, I guess, you know, I guess if like someone is blind and you're at a conference of blind people, like that would be like the same feeling.
But if you're just like a regular person, like, I don't know. I don't know if you're able to feel that sort of belonging. And I feel like as people who stutter, like it's amazing that we get to have that. Um, so as an
Uri Schneider: outsider and a person who doesn't stutter as an ally, it's something indescribable that I can palpably feel when I'm in the presence of a group or in the presence of a, of a conference like that.
But I just wanna amplify what, what Matt's saying is like, it's not like, it's not like you find a place where finally people just get you or accept you. It's, it, it's this, it's this value. It's this positive, unbelievably rich feeling. It's not just like, oh, I feel okay again. It, it transforms into. . Wow. This is, this is giving life.
This,
Matt Bernucca: this just is, I just feel invigorated. Yeah. Being in the presence of this community.
Uri Schneider: Maybe you wanna talk about, cuz again, I remember the day you landed, you were in your room and like you said, you didn't know where to start. There was no golf course in Chicago . Um, so forgive me if we're going back to the Gulf, but Right.
You were in your room . And I said, Matt, you know, you want me to come up and like, we'll, you know, we'll break bread together. We got some great pastrami over here from uh, what is it over there? Romanian Deli over there. Great. Kosher Deli in Chicago. But eventually you came down, you met up with me and my dad.
I think it was the first time you met my dad. Yeah. Have some pictures of that. And we met up, Ruben Chuff was there as well. And uh, but yeah, I mean that evolution maybe. Mm-hmm. feeling like an outsider feeling like, what were you doing? You were sort of resistant, didn't know what you were getting into. And then what evolved?
Like, cuz that's quite a shift, as you said, they're opposites. Right. Something that brings shame and then something that gives pride. Can you shed any light on that?
Matt Bernucca: Yeah, I mean, what evolved from that is, um, you know, when you're at the conference, you don't want it to end. Um, and when it does end, I've, I've gone twice now.
I obviously, I would've gone last summer, but covid 19, that did not happen. Um, but when, when I leave, I've gone to the conference twice now. When I get back, I actually, like, I crash really hard and I'm like unbelievably depressed for like two weeks. I come down really hard. But, um, what it did is it facilitated me to be able to access my local stuttering support group chapters.
And, um, and yeah, I mean, that. And I was very fortunate to be living in New York then because the co-leaders of the Manhattan and the Brooklyn chapter, they do a, um, a one day conference, but it's a little bit different. And essentially , you're not allowed to be there if you don't stutter. So no fluent SLPs, it's only people who stutter, and that is it.
And that I did that. I went, that was in September, 2018, so that was after my first conference. And the vibe in that room is like, I mean that because what happens when you're at the conference and it's your first time, you're like, oh, I'm starting to accept my stutter and now I don't wanna be covert and now I want to get out and stutter.
But that's hard to do. I did, um, quick story. I did a mock support group for Dr. Eric Jackson. I don't know if you know him or not. He teaches speech stuff at nyu and we did a support group in front of his class. And after the class was over, the students were asking questions that one student talked about this assignment that Eric gave them.
And um, the assignment was you have to order a coffee or order something from a cafe, but you have to stutter and no one can do it.
Uri Schneider: These are students of speech pathology. These are students who are gonna go out and try to help other people who stutter. And the classic thing to do is like desensitization and get out there.
And these students were challenged to go out, order a cup of coffee and do some pseudo stuttering, some fake stuttering, and they all tapped.
Matt Bernucca: They all can do it, . And it just made me think the second she told me that story, I was like, wow, people who stutter are just the most badass people on the planet , because like, we have to do it.
Or you can opt out, you can switch words, which is fine, but if you do choose to stutter and you do it, I mean you're, I'm, you're a badass. Like you are, you are an absolute badass. And it's funny, we were actually in our last group meeting, we, we were talking about stuttering as protest. Like the act of stuttering is a form of protest because you're going against conventional ways of speaking and what are like accepted norms of speaking.
But yeah, I'm getting off topic. Sorry. Um, and so going to those two conferences and especially, um, Especially being around people who stutter and only people who stutter at the one day conference in New York. That just like really put me over the, over the hump, over the hill of its acceptance and being able to stutter, being able to, you
Uri Schneider: described it as a hump, a hit or two sides coming over to the other side.
What was, what was Matthew Beka doing, experiencing, thinking, avoiding, um, prior, going back into, you know, adolescents, teenage years, and then what are the things that started to become more possible, more open, more part of your day to day afterward?
Matt Bernucca: Um,
Uri Schneider: geez, if you, if you wanna touch that, you don't have to, you
Matt Bernucca: mean in terms.
Actively stuttering in front of people
Uri Schneider: or, um, you know, I'm gonna even say, I'm gonna even say, I think that the act of protest, the act of, of, of showing up with integrity and honesty as you are in a place where people didn't otherwise give you the respect and space to do that. I think that's important.
But for this moment, I'm saying beyond that, and one of the things we probably talked about with Malka, with you and, and together like beyond the stuttering, right, is not only about letting the stuttering out, it's also about allowing yourself to go for things. Whether it's the jobs, the career, the pursuits, the relationships, taking things further.
Yeah. How you live your life, whether you live your life, going to the place where it's a simple, large coffee, or you go to the cafe where it's like you gotta figure out 15 Italian words to get the coffee you want, but you don't, cuz you'd rather hide the stutter. So now you're drinking crappy coffee. So like, what are the two sides?
Cause you talked about the two sides and if you could kind of bring us into that, if you're willing. Sure. Yeah, it's really valuable. The biggest way to put
Matt Bernucca: it is I used to let my stutter make a lot of decisions for me and , and those decisions started to become unconscious. One of the biggest ones was that I convinced myself that I was an introvert and that I didn't need to have a lot of social interaction to have like a healthy life.
It's not true about me at all. Uh, I love people. I think connections are the most important thing on the planet, and so I literally believed a lie about myself for 28 years or something. . I mean, I'm not saying I was like a loner, but I let my stutter make a lot of decisions for me, and now I don't let it make any choices for me.
Like, I just, I, I refuse to, and I check in with myself sometimes I'm like, is my stutter? Am I not wanting to do this because of my stutter? And I, I just do not let it control that aspect of my life. Um, that
Uri Schneider: is so powerful. I think that in meeting young people, and, uh, I shared a couple stories in previous conversations with kids saying to their teacher, they don't wanna speak up in class.
And sometimes you think the person is an introvert, but really they're an extrovert and they're just putting it on cuz of the stuttering. And then you made people who are truly introverts, they still wanna have a greater degree of freedom to express themselves, but never to assume, you know, what's up.
Right. So sometimes people present one way and truly they're another, sometimes they're truly an introvert. So just giving space for that. But for you, you're saying like part of the covert, if we kind of broaden it, you were living life undercover like a c i agent. You had a, you had an identity. You, you were undercover, your cover was, I like myself, I like spending time on my own.
And that was really a cover for the true. Yeah. That's, that's
Matt Bernucca: powerful. Yeah. And now I don't have that anymore. Um, there, I mean, and there are times when it's hard , like there are times when it's, I'm like, God, I, I know my stutter is not, I know I'm stuttering a lot right now, and it's, but I'm just like, you know what?
I don't care. Like, I no longer, I no longer care. Um, so, so yeah. Um, and then having the conference, then having the one day conference in Manhattan sort of like put me over the edge of like, okay, I'm really ready to start stuttering. Um, and, um, , it's funny, I'm really to start to start to do something that I've been doing my whole life.
Um, and yeah, and I, I, I had conversations with sort of like every important person in my life about my stutter. Like I've been friends with people for years and I didn't tell 'em about my stutter, talk about it with them. So I
Uri Schneider: remedy What, what happened in those conversations, Matt? Was it, was it like a watershed moment for them, or was it surprising to you that it wasn't as much of a unknown and unseen as you thought?
In other words, was it more of a relief for you to put it on the table, but they kind of knew it, they just figured it was uncomfortable or you actually revealed something that they were like, you're kidding me, I You don't stutter. I never saw you stutter. No, no, no. Really, I do and I switch words a lot, and I wanna be open about it.
what was that like? Cause a lot of people worry about that moment and the judgment and the surprise and shaken up relationships. What was that like for you
Matt Bernucca: to do that? Yeah, it's a mixed bag. You get so many different reactions. Um,
I, I have a hard, I have a little bit of a hard time with this, um, because when someone who stutters, discloses to someone, the person who stutters, stuttering is such a huge part of their life, is something they think about all the time. There have been times in, it's in that person's life when it consumes them.
Um, but the problem is, is that. Stuttering isn't that common? And most people know nothing about it. Literally nothing. And so when you tell someone, they're like, oh, okay, . And you're just like, what? Like, so you always, I always, when I started to de disclose, I expected people to sort of like, I don't know, maybe just like ask me more questions about it or be more in, be more interested.
But like a lot of times it'd be like, oh, okay, . I was just like, alright, so guess we can get lunch or something. I don't know. Like
Uri Schneider: So you slotted like this big emotional load of prepared time and energy and it was like, okay, cool. Yeah. What's for lunch?
Matt Bernucca: Yeah. . Seriously. But at the same time as I also don't wanna let that discourage people from disclosing.
Uh, I think we have to look at disclosing as something that's mainly for us. And have low or no expectations from what you will get back from someone and make disclosure like a selfish act. Because when I first started to disclose, I got reactions I didn't want. And I think that's because no one could probably meet my reaction that I wanted.
Uri Schneider: Like what? Like talk about that. What would be an example of a reaction that was, uh, hopefully well-meaning, but not what you had hoped for?
Matt Bernucca: Um, . Well, I got one reaction from someone I used to work with. Um, she was the first employer that I ever disclosed to. Um, so I disclosed to her over our lunch. and I told her about like the conference and I told her about like how I switched words for so long and she said, oh, so you must be able to rhyme really well,
because I've like switched words for my whole life. And I was like, yeah, no, what ? And so, and then she took a phone call, . So that was probably like the worst reaction I've ever had. Um, and, um, yeah. And, but most of the reactions I get are, are like, oh wow, like, I didn't notice that about you. Or like, yeah, I saw something a little.
But, um, yeah, that's cool. And you're like, okay, . If you were on the
Uri Schneider: other side of that, what would be your dream reaction? So like, if you could be that employer at that lunch break and here's this guy that you've been working with, and he says to you, Hey, you know, I just wanted to share with you, like, I've got this really powerful experience going on in my life and I'm coming, coming in touch with this thing, ah, at this conference.
Ah, what would you hope that you would be able to receive or give?
Matt Bernucca: I like when people ask me questions about it, um, the best reaction I ever got is, um, this guy from my old job. He came in the next day and he's like, I watched this thing on YouTube about stuttering. And I was like, what? ? I was like, oh my God.
Um, so that was like, but I'm not asking anyone to do that. I just wanna like, just say that. But I think, I think
Uri Schneider: for, again, for the folks that don't stutter, whether it's parents, teachers, friends, or speech therapists, like you said, we don't know. Too many people don't know what it's all about. And so you're having this big moment.
The other person wasn't prepared. They didn't, they didn't come in that day to lunch knowing there was gonna be this epic reveal, uh, or this epic conversation. Like they thought you were just gonna talk about the, you know, taco Bell or whatever you're eating. And, um, You know, there's this moment, Hey, I'm waiting for the kosher one.
But, um, one day they, they, um, it's interesting to me, right? I think it's helpful when people like, you can share in hindsight what you would wish would be said, because then those people who want to give the best answer they're at, at a loss. And so yeah, she might have been coping with feeling overwhelmed in that moment and like took the call to kind of like break the tension for her.
Totally. Um, whereas that other person like took it a step further and showed interest and said, if it's important to you, it's important to me. I'm gonna go like, learn a little bit more and come back and, and ask for,
Matt Bernucca: I think disclosing for me, I look at it, it's not only a selfish act, but as a way to sort of support my fellow stutterers.
Like, because we have to educate people on how we want to be treated. Um,
Uri Schneider: like a
Matt Bernucca: stand ambassador. . Yeah, exactly. That's a much better word for it. Um, you know, a lot of us don't like our words being, our sentences being finished for us. I don't like that. Um, happens a lot, but it's fine. But I'd rather just get my word out.
Um, yeah. And um, and I also believe, and I also believe disclosing is important and stuttering is Im important if one is able to, because I firmly, well, I believe that there are more people who are hiding in their stutter than there are people who are outspoken about it and accepting it. I think so. I could be wrong.
The needle's moving. I, I, I, I agree. Joe Biden, baby . Um, absolutely. I think the needle is moving. I think this is an incredible time for. Stuttering right now. Um, and I'm really happy. No,
Uri Schneider: like right now, right? Forget about Joe Biden. . Matthew Bern Right
Matt Bernucca: now. Yeah. Right now. Well, I'm no president, but um, yeah, I just think
Uri Schneider: that, I don't think you'd be a good president.
I think you gotta be. You gotta be you. I wanna golf .
Matt Bernucca: No, I'm kidding. I'd be
Uri Schneider: a great, listen, tiger Woods is phasing out. I think there's a space. . Cameron. Cameron. Cameron. Fran says, you got, you got game. He's okay, man. Woo. Do you have notes there that you wanna share? Do you have some notes there that you're, you're, because if you have things you wanna share, I don't wanna digress, but if No, no.
Let me ask you this. Okay. You kind of like alluded to, uh, that again, I'm gonna keep going back. I like the idea of the two sides. I also like the idea of like with time, you sometimes can see how. , challenging rough experiences can sometimes be formative at the same time. Not in the moment, but for example, you know, the leap of faith, the book, the trip to Chicago at the moment was distress and it was stressful and then it became something extremely transformative.
Mm-hmm. , what were some of the most challenging or unhelpful experiences that younger, the younger version of you experienced? Just to really be real, maybe if you want to go there. And then what were some of the most courageous or defining moments, either prior to or after the conference? Just moments where you saw yourself no longer there, where you used to be defining, in terms of defining stuttering, however you take that.
Like I think that you, you kind of set it up as like life before and, and then life after. And I just wonder, was it mostly within yourself, like the strain of keeping the cover up and just carrying that, that kind of. , what that took from you. Were there experiences of people giving you a hard time? Like what did you endure perhaps that was you're grateful to let go of and be passed?
And then maybe what are some of the things you're most proud of lately that you do that your younger self wouldn't have imagined
or skip?
Matt Bernucca: Um,
I'm trying to think of like certain,
certain events. I just, I, you know, I just think that, um, that's a hard one to answer, but if you, Accepting. Like if you're a person who stutters, stuttering is a part of who you are. And if you are repressing it and hiding it a lot, um, it's sort of like it eats away at you. At least it away at me. And I think when the word acceptance is used a lot in the world of stuttering and, um, I think accepting your stutter, it also means accepting yourself.
It goes beyond accepting your stutter. And I think we all, whether you have a stutter or not, I think you need to accept you. Hopefully one will get to a place in their life when they accept themselves, whatever that means to everyone. But. If you, if you're stuttering and you don't accept it, then I think you don't accept yourself.
And, but I also wanna say that like, I am in support of every single person who has a stutter. And I do not care where they are in their journey. I support them. I support Joe Biden. I know that's like, I know people feel, there are very contentious feelings about Joe Biden and like, he's not doing this and that enough.
Like, if you have a stutter, I support you a hundred percent. And there are people who feel certain ways about acceptance and I support that too. I, I support people who wanna actually better the way that they speak. And people who want to stutter less, I support them too. But you know, for me, what has helped me is acceptance.
and it's funny, I just wanna come back to this. When I was in psycho-analysis, me and my therapist came to the conclusion that it was my, my life that was making my stutter worse. And if I could just only make my life better in all these ways, then my stutter would just sort of like fall away to the wayside.
That's not true. But when I accepted my stutter and I started stuttering more and letting my stutter out, I began to stutter less. And my periods of fluency were greater, greater, um,
and now I can better see the correlation between events in my life and my st. , whereas before I was accepting of my stutter, it was all a jumble and I had no idea. But now it's, now I can sort of like piece it out and, um, not all the time, but sometimes, and I just think, oh, an example.
Uri Schneider: Yeah. Can you bring that down to anything?
For sure.
Matt Bernucca: Yeah. Um, like, like, um,
I don't know, like when I was going through a breakup, I sort of like lost my speech. My daughter was like, really bad. And like, but that's not a good example. I can't really give examples. I'm sorry, , I don't have examples. But
Uri Schneider: you're, you're a creative, you're a high level, you know, high level thinker. I'm just, I'm just trying for those people like myself who just wanna kind of hang into everything you're sharing.
There's so much wisdom in what you're saying Matt, and I just think everybody should be listening carefully. And I think what comes through from you is your journey being multifaceted and it being something that was very dramatic in many ways and in other ways. It's hard to even name different pieces of it, but it feels like big things happened.
And a lot of it is credit to the, the finding a community, finding a stuttering self-help community and being a part of that and. an active part in that, not only for yourself, but as you said, to to be an a stand ambassador for stuttering. Uh, and also, uh, a person who lends a hand to those people in their own journeys.
But to be a mentor, a guy to help, or a peer support, um, I think that that's coming through loud and clear. What if we said it this way, Matt? Is there something you wish you could tell your 12 year old self or some 12 year old kid who's going through something similar?
Matt Bernucca: Yeah. Go to the conference. . Awesome.
Uri Schneider: Take your ass to the
Matt Bernucca: conference, man. I mean, yeah, and that's, that's what I would say. That's what I would say. Cause you gotta get around other people who stutter. Like, because I take everyone, I, I feel like everyone who is in my life, who stutters, I take them with me all the time and I think about them. , I think about them right before I'm gonna stutter in front of someone who is like a stranger.
And I'm like, not only am I doing this for myself, I'm doing this for everyone that I know who's stutters. Like I'm doing it for them to, and I'm, yeah. And I'm doing it for the people that I don't know who stutter as well, who stutter and, um, yeah. Cuz that blazing a
Uri Schneider: trail, blazing a trail for
Matt Bernucca: people that might come.
Yeah. And I, I don't, I don't want any like compliments or any like, praise. I just feel like that's what, like, I just, like, I, I'm, I'm in support of everyone who stutters. I feel I hated my stutter my whole life. And now I'm proud to stutter. Like, I'm proud to be a person who stutters. I think it's like amazing.
It's like this amazing thing and it, I don't know, it's like, I don't know what I would be without it. So it's crazy to say that. And like, I don't think people who are in a hard place with their stutter want to hear that. They don't wanna hear someone say, I couldn't live without my stutter. I think that that would've pissed me.
The, that would've pissed me off. That would've really pissed me off.
Uri Schneider: Thanks for keeping it clean. It's early. We got some kids watching. Yeah. Sorry, . Yeah, it would, it would be very upsetting. It would be
Matt Bernucca: really
Uri Schneider: if anybody knows how to watch their words. It's you, um, . I wish I could just let you let it rip. And, you know, in the office.
That's, that's all, all good. But yeah, we do have some, some young people. That's okay. Okay. Yeah, no, but that's really important. Can you, can you, um, what would you say to that person and, and that, and that's what I mean, think about you earlier in the journey where you're ready to engage. The fact that this is something that brings you to tears.
It's that important to you. Yeah. And it's been, it's been very significantly impacting a lot of. Words you choose to say things you choose the persona you take on to be pretending to be less of an extrovert than you really, truly feel you are. Um, but you're not ready to hear. Um, someone just tell you, you know, go to the conference.
You, you weren't ready for that. You're, you're not ready to
Matt Bernucca: jump into a room.
Uri Schneider: What would you say would be the helpful messages for the you or for that other young person? Cuz so many parents and therapists, they wanna help people further along, but everyone's ready for different things at different stages.
What are some of the seeds you feel would be healthy messages, like you said, for supporting anybody wherever they're at. What would be maybe a way, like you could offer a parent to teacher, a therapist to say to someone who isn't there yet, but you wanna plant the seeds of that possibility.
Matt Bernucca: I think it's not as much as saying something as it is, it's just listening to someone talk and listening to everything they have to say and not.
Interjecting and just having them speak for as long as they need to speak about what is making them suffer and letting them just talk and then very slowly and patiently encourage them to get themselves around other people who stutter. That is
Uri Schneider: touching a cord for me and for a lot of people right now.
Do you have a dream, a vision, a hope for the future?
Matt Bernucca: Um, take that wherever you want. A vaccine would be nice. If my grandma could get a vaccine, that'd be good. Um, uh, hoping to dream. I just want everyone who is. In the shadows of their stutter to come out. That's my hope and my dream. And I just want the world of stuttering to be just bigger and bigger and bigger.
Yeah. I just want, cuz like it's so funny cuz like half the time I disclose, people have no idea what I'm talking about. And then the other half people are like, oh, I know someone who stutters or this person in my family stutters or blah blah blah. I was actually, there's a guy, he's a golfer on the European tour right now who won two weeks in a row that never happens.
That is like very rare. And he has a stutter and he is openly stuttering and press conferences and I'm like DMing him on Instagram. I'm like, dude, you're like the greatest and he won't respond to me. And um, I just want more stuff like that. You know? I want more people who have platforms of visibility and success.
And I want to see, and I want people in those platforms who have stutters. I'd like to see them stutter. And um, I think it's just amazing for young people to see successful people who have a stutter, stutter. And, um, that's, that's what I
Uri Schneider: want. You're making it happen. You're walking the walk, man, you are , you are, you are doing it.
You're living it. And like you said, I won't give you platitudes, but you know, from hesitating and being actually super aversive to listening to anything or do, you know, related to someone stuttering to becoming a chapter leader, I think that speaks for itself. Um, I'll share with you some, some Malka just dropped as a comment.
Mm-hmm. , and you wanna respond or we can just go home with this comment. But it's really powerful and I couldn't agree more. Matt, thank you for sharing your journey. You embraced your experience every step of the way. You guided me, a therapist regarding your needs and your readiness at each stage until you went on your own and really took off.
Matt Bernucca: Yeah. Um, well, yeah, I guess I, I don't know what I taught her, but she taught me a lot. , she taught me,
Uri Schneider: taught a whole lot. That's a flow state right there. Not sure what's going on, but just things happen.
Matt Bernucca: Yeah. Good.
Uri Schneider: Yeah. Any last words you wanna put in? This has been an amazing
Matt Bernucca: share. Uh, I don't know. I've said a lot.
I've said quite a lot. Um, yeah, you know what, I just. The conference comes back soon. We had a stuttering foursome, a golf stuttering, foursome two summers ago. It was like so amazing. So would love to get, would love to do that again, just to mix things that I love with stuttering is just so much fun. So, um, yeah, just hopefully we get rid of this virus man and we can all hang out
Uri Schneider: Totally, totally. Well, can't wait for that. And, uh, thank you for taking this time. If you're listening or watching, share this, uh, comment like it, that's the hope that I share with Matt is that more people who feel that they're in the shadows or feel kind of bleak or feel like there, there's no one in the world that would get it or understand how their experience feels to them.
To know that there is a world out there that, uh, that gets it and can be incredibly supportive even if it doesn't seem like you want to go there. , put your toes in the water. And uh, and, and there are people like Matt out there leading the way and so many others. Uh, so nobody should feel alone. So I just wanna wish everybody stay safe, stay well vaccinate if, if, if that's an option for you.
And if it's not, keep doing things to stay safe. But at the same time, don't put life on hold. So even if we are living with what we're living with, Matt runs groups online. There are other online groups. You don't have to kind of hold your breath for that conference. Hold your breath, but breathe in the meantime too.
So thank you Matt, and I wish everybody, you know, a great end of 2020 and stay safe. Keep talking and uh, thank you Matt.