Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
Bridget could talk for hours at her own kitchen table. At home, with her husband and her sister and the two friends she had known since school, she was funny, quick, warm, a good talker. No one who knew her only in those settings would ever have guessed she had a problem with speaking. But put Bridget in a meeting at work, or at a party where she did not know everyone, or on the phone to a stranger, or standing at a shop counter with a queue behind her, and something happened that she had no control over. Her throat locked. The words, which she knew, which were right there, which she wanted to say, simply would not come. It was not that she was too nervous to speak; it was that speech became, in those moments, physically impossible. She was.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
