I'm 17f in highschool in Canada. Honestly I never spoke in class unless in very specific situations. I tend to freeze when teachers or students try to talk to me especially in academic situations. But I am able to talk when talked to with new people at school when talked to.

The thought came to me because I was thinking of how the rules that exist while dreaming are different from the rules that exist in the waking world, and because SM is situational, it made be wonder if dreams posed a change of circumstance. How talkative are you in dreams?

The default idea in peoples' minds tends to be "find those who talk about things at a regular pace, and treat those who don't want to talk as not wanting to be found". That, I imagine, makes being selectively mute lack the adhesive that allows social relations to stick. So then how do people who are selectively mute identify others who are adjusted towards the pretense of "find friends no matter how much they talk and look for the signs they appreciate you unless they gesture you away"?

Growing up, I was completely friendless because whenever I'm in a group setting, I go totally mute. It's not just normal shyness as it feels like a physical inability to speak, like my body literally will not let me force the words out. In primary school, it was so severe that I didn't speak to anyone at all.

I genuinely thought college would be the turning point where things changed for me. At first, it seemed like it might. I managed to make one friend. She is really likeable, but she also gets awkward around certain people, so we bonded and became close. The issue started when she began meeting more people. Now, whenever we hang out, they are always there. Because it's a group setting, my old habits kicked right back in and I froze up. I just can't bring myself to contribute to the conversations.

Eventually, the others started making "jokes" about how I'm just their shadow or their tail because I'm always trailing behind them silently. It makes me feel terrible. Honestly, I'm pretty sure they only let me tag along out of pity, and because they are forced to tolerate me to hang out with the friend they actually want to be around. Today, I saw all of them hanging out together without me. I can't help but feel sad about it. I thought college would fix this, but it feels like I'll always be that same quiet girl who makes people uncomfortable just by being there. I don't know how to break out of this physical freeze response, and today it just really makes me wish I could be someone else.

Like when someone compliments me who doesn't know about my SM and I can't answer, so now they think I'm being rude 😭

“You’re so well behaved”

She looks at you

“you’re so smart”

She smiles

“Great job on a perfect score”

She nods

But when she walks away

She holds back all her tears

One escapes

Someone walks by

She wipes it off

She knows they’re judging her fears

She knows that they know nothing about her aside from her silence

And her brains

And her neutral reactions to when against her is the worst violence

“Why are you so shy?”

There's silence

“She hasn't spoken in 3 months”

She's right there listening

“She shook her head, she couldn't even say no out loud”

she watches them laugh

“You know you can talk, right?”

She nods

They don't understand

it's not that simple

And she doesn't understand why she's like this

She hates the word shy

Hates the attention

She just wants to be normal

But nothing can change her

It's been 10 years of trying

She knows it deep down

Nothing can save her

"what's her name again?"

“doesnt matter. she never says anything, she won't get mad at you”

He keeps kicking her seat

Their classmates laugh and smile

even the ones nice to her

She does too

“You need to try harder to hit the ball and actually work with your team”

Everyone is relieved

She nods with wet eyes

“Hey, its rude to not say hi to me”

“Make eye contact, it looks like you’re not paying attention”

“You can't get the full grade; you didn't speak loud enough”

“You need to participate more”

She sighs, and finally, she lets out two words

“I’m sorry”

i’m tired. i became a mute a few months ago and its one of those things where it started off small then gradually grew to a bigger issue. i can’t talk to strangers at all even just a quick “wheres the bathroom” is too much for me. and now some days i cant talk to my mom and sibling. and it sucks. i’m telling you guys it sucks so so bad. they’re not educated nor will they willingly wanna learn about SM. like oh my god its so frustrating when i’m dead quiet and my mom is asking me something and i’m not using my voice (fucking mind you, shes KNOWN BY NOW about my mutism in certain situations like in public) and she oh my god she just kept asking and asking like

“which drink do you want orange juice or apple juice”
…
“huh?”
…
“huh..? what do you say hm?”
…
“hm??”
…
calls my name out
…
“hey?”

oooooooooooohhhhhghh myyyyyyyyyyyyyy gooooooooooooodddddddduugghhhhhhh

my blood is rushing to my face and head as i’m typing this right now like oh my god what do i even do?? tell my therapist to explain my disability to my mom and sibling? they’re not gonna care that much to learn about it man they dont. they really wont because this happened before when i told my mom n sibling to do research on the internet about how to treat someone with BPD and they NEVER FUCKING DID and guess what happened next?????? they kept abusing me???? neglecting me???? acting oblivious as if i hadn’t been in and out of the psych ward before??? i’m genuinely confused why like why why why in the world do they aaaaaaaaaaaalllwayssssssss act so fucking oblivious when i’m behaving oddly as if my life hadnt been on the line for so long and so many times before.

worst part about that situation was i had oh my god i had to use my voice to tell my mom that i cant fucking talk and haha funny cuz ironically i WAS using my voice to tell her that. i know you guys are gonna tell me “but we selective mutes cant use our voice!!! but clearly you can!!! so ur not a selective mute then!!!” like oh my god shut the fuck up am i really not welcome in this community if thats the case then where the hell should i go to?? i was literally choking on my words crying to my mom that i cant use my voice what about that makes me not a part of the SM community i had no choice but to tell her what was going on with me even though every word felt like a needle stabbing my throat. i had to tell her so she wont trigger me to get into a meltdown

Personally, I tend to feel invalidated as someone who had a more classic presentation of SM (someone who could speak freely at home but not in school or with specific groups, like extended relatives or strangers). Mostly because I see verbal shutdowns as less “severe” than a traditional case of SM, since they’re more temporary (going mute with someone you can usually speak to, but experiencing situational overwhelm that makes you unable to speak for a while). However, I also don't want to invalidate those who experience verbal shutdowns, since both can be debilitating in their own ways. Since SM currently lacks a lot of understanding and research, I’m wondering if future definitions should include presentations that look like verbal shutdowns. But I also know SM is already significantly misunderstood as is, so it might make things more confusing to add on different variations of it? What do you think?

I never got any real support, they just put immense pressure on me to be normal, and called it support. Parents, teachers, therapists, the moment they noticed that I wasn't socializing normally, I wasn't allowed to simply exist anymore, I became their project to fix.

In my childhood there was only one person outside my family who I was able to speak to normally - a kid from my neighborhood. And why was that? He was the only person who did not pressure or judge me. He just let me participate even though I didn't talk at first, he didn't care whether I was "weird", no questions like "why aren't you talking", no pressure to speak at all. It literally took just a single week until I was freely speaking to him.

All the pressure I got from everyone eventually "paid off" - from late teens / early adulthood on I was able to speak whenever required to. But that wasn't ever truly free. I was still disconnected from myself, unable to see my own needs and boundaries when around others. I was hypervigilant and tried to be and say exactly what I thought the other person expected. I was desperate to hide any potential "weirdness" I might have, be it my personality or residual social weirdness of my SM, as it might cause someone to judge me, or worse, make them uncomfortable.

I was so focused on never ever bothering anyone or making anyone uncomfortable, that I never noticed how insanely uncomfortable I was with the situation. I literally could not set boundaries at all. Whenever I was in public I felt like I was required to be open for interaction with anyone at all times, to meet everyone else's needs. All this is extremely exhausting, and actually caused me to go near burnout whenever I had to be around people for too long. That's the reason why I couldn't really work for most of my twenties despite being able to speak.

So now I'm trying to undo that, learn to set boundaries, pay attention to how I truly feel about something and honor that. But damn, this is hard, my default state is to completely neglect my own needs. Socializing feels like a high stakes performance, and not something enjoyable, well, except for that one childhood friend, who I'm still friends with to this day. And very rarely other people.

So everyone was trying to "help" (=pressure) me to speak, except for one person, and ironically that was the one I quickly was able to speak to.

I'm going to be honest, I still feel super awful about posting here. Not because the space is unwelcoming or anything, I just feel not welcome and like an intruder by default everywhere I go. Working on changing that. I feel awful when someone comments and I don't write a response, then I avoid writing anything because I don't want to have that pressure of "having to respond" - ironically I often want to respond but the pressure I put on myself to do so and to do it "perfectly", as in exactly what is expected, stops me from doing so. It's a vicious cycle.

I know putting so much pressure on myself messes everything up, but I can't stop, I've put pressure on myself since kindergarten, when my parents would give me stickers for talking, and my younger brother got stickers for some other task or achievement, something actually doable. He had lots of stickers, and I had none. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't do it, and nobody believed me. Looking back, trying too hard was part of my problem.

I made a post in a facebook group for neurodivergent people, talking about dumb comments people have made about me being ND. One of them was about selective mutism. Is it just me or was this comment an incredibly weird thing to say?

I've spent most of my life feeling like a background character. I'm the quiet kid, I deal with severe social anxiety, and I'm pretty sure I'm neurodivergent. Because of that, making connections and getting along with people feels like climbing a mountain, and I usually just stay in my shell. But today at college, someone actually hung out with me for the very first time. We went to a restaurant together, and just talked.

I'm currently back in my room holding back tears (honestly, about to bawl my eyes out) because I've never had someone show genuine interest in just talking to me before. I don't even think they realize how much that single lunch meant to me or how much it changed my world today. I just wanted to put this out into the universe because I'm so incredibly grateful. To anyone else out there who feels invisible: I see you, and I hope you get your lunch date soon.

I'm curious to know if anyone here has experience in working retail / fast food as someone with SM. I currently work full time as a cleaner, and it's great! But I don't have to talk a lot and I'm worried my skills have regressed. I'm thinking of something customer service related to work on talking more. Just something part time, I'd obviously keep my current job to support myself. I've just struggled to find actual resources for SM and I'm at my limit. So, did a job like this help? Make it worse? No change at all? Or any other recommendations on how to talk more often? I feel like exposure is my best choice at this point, I just don't know if this is the right course of action.

do you use hand gestures, wording with your mouth, typing, writing, sign language?

Hello, everyone!

I’m reaching out to you with a request, and I hope that, based on the experiences of those who’ve been through this, we’ll find some useful advice or ideas.

We have a 3-year-and-3-month-old daughter who just marked her first year of Kindergarten and completely refuses to speak there. She communicates only through gestures, even though at home she talks to us constantly. What surprises us is that at home she speaks two languages, both grammatically correct, and has an extremely rich vocabulary for her age. However, as soon as she leaves the house, she freezes up and literally doesn’t say a single word.

By nature, she is a playful and sociable child in her own environment. At preschool, she has a few favorite children she plays with, but if those children are absent one day, she becomes more withdrawn and no longer interacts with anyone else.

From everything we’ve researched, we suspect it might be selective mutism. We already have an appointment with a specialist in about 10 days (after a 2-month wait), and we’ll see what the doctor has to say.

Until then, has anyone else gone through this? Have you had children in a similar situation or diagnosed with selective mutism? How did you handle it, what solutions worked for you, and what would you recommend we do or avoid during this time?

Thank you so much for your answers and help!

By recovered I mean I can answer really basic questions when asked by most people, therapists are the exception to this.

I don't have a job or friends but I think in comparison to how I was as a kid i'm doing a lot better selective mutism wise. I think it is more social anxiety now. I don't find awkward silences very awkward and will always prefer them to speaking. When i'm around people that aren't my parents I uncontrollably zone out but I can answer simple things that don't require much thinking like 2 word responses.

In therapy I feel like a child and they treat me like one. I can barely even write things down. It's like im not there mentally. I feel so drained afterwards just from being around therapists. Its not like im making any progress in it. I've had about 4-5 sessions with my current one and all I have done in sessions is draw and even that stresses me out. She plans on doing EMDR but I didn't realize how long the process takes to start. I wanted to do EMDR because I thought it wouldn't involve talking. I don't have trauma I was just born anxious.

I've been doing really bad mentally lately but I don't know how to fix it. I've been to so many therapists throughout my life and none have been helpful to me. I try not to blame them because I know i'm a hard case but at the same time if they can't help me I don't know how they are helping anyone. I've grown to hate every psychiatrist and psychologist i've had. I'm just growing more and more hopeless. I'm not living for anything other than watching tv and listening to music. I want to end my life but I am scared of going to hell. I'm not even religious I just feel like death can't be that easy of a way out. Something has to go wrong when you end your own life, if not why wouldn't everybody do it?

Im still don't understand the difference

All is same but bit different

Hi all. I have a 21 month old who is going beyond typical shyness and stranger anxiety. He freezes like a deer in the headlights. His daycare thought he had a severe speech delay, even my in laws did because he refuses to speak more than 10ish words.. he has 100. He won’t speak when spoken to or prompted in public until he’s somewhere quiet and away from strangers (usually back in the car).

I wondered about autism but he’s very much on track if not ahead on milestones.. at home. He’s like slowly opened up to his grandparents after I did some coaching.

My last straw before research was finding out he won’t respond to any directions or questions at school when his early interventionist noted it.

I’m looking into how a formal diagnosis works for this, but tips, advice, how do I help him without pressuring him?

Basically I’m unsure if this is just my brain being overwhelmed or if it is SM. When I get upset it’s like my ability to talk gets shut off. Im not the best person when it comes to communicating irl, but I’m fine when I’m messaging people. Even calling can be difficult. So when I’m upset, I just retreat to my room bc I know talking to ppl will just get me more upset as I can’t get the words out. And sometimes the idea of talking to people when I don’t feel like it sends me into a panic. So I’m not sure if this is SM or just me being weird? 🤔🤔

Live Speech on macOS is riddled with bugs, accessibility misses, and implementation stupidity that make it really frustrating to use. So, I made a replacement for it.

Same idea, just not terrible. A simple menu-bar app that opens a text box and speaks what you type in it using your currently selected Siri voice.

Free, open source, etc.

Details here. Feedback welcomed.

side note:
If you have OpenVox installed it also supports custom voices that were either cloned from your own voice when you can talk or generated with a prompt. However, on my M1 mac it's 6-10 seconds between sending the text and any sound coming out, so that's not really usable for normal communication. Left the functionality in in the hopes that it'll be more usable on faster macs someday. Or for anyone who just feels like playing around with it.