Selective Mutism

Part 3 - Selective Mutism: Why can't they speak?

If people with selective mutism don't choose to be mute, why can't they speak?

Everyone has unnatural fears that don't always make sense. While selective mutism isn't a fear as such (although some people do refer to it as a phobia of speech) the two do have similarities. There's nothing particularly dangerous about spiders in some country's, but if you had a fear of them, you wouldn't willingly go over and pick one up. Most people try to avoid their fears even if they don't understand why they're afraid. In the same way, there's nothing dangerous about talking, but someone with selective mutism can't force themselves to overcome that feeling easily. The difference is that people with fears are consciously aware of what they're afraid of (even if they don't know why) and then choose to avoid that thing, while selective mutism is more like an instinctive response to an unconscious fear, or an uncontrollable reaction for seemingly no reason at all. While a selectively mute person will usually learn to recognise trigger situations overtime, and often avoid them, not everyone would be able to explain why that trigger situation became a trigger in the first place.

When put into a situation you perceive as dangerous, whether consciously or unconsciously, it often triggers one of four responses: fight, flight, freeze or fawn. In the case of selective mutism, the person experiences something like an internal freeze. When you think of a freeze response, you might think of it as literally freezing and temporarily loosing all control over your body but, while that is the case for some people, many people with selective mutism can still move. Instead, they just lose control over their speech. Some people describe it as "loosing control of their vocal cords" while others describe it as their "throat tightening" and being unable to get the words out or "being unable to put pressure on their vocal cords." The severity of this freeze varies between each person with the condition and it's hard to say if everyone experiences the same internal freeze in the same way, but everyone can narrow it down to being unable to control parts of the body that are necessary for speech in some way.

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Hopefully that wasn't worded too badly, but here's the summary:

When someone with selective mutism is put in a situation where they have to speak around people/places they're not comfortable with, they experience severe anxiety which causes them to freeze.