My name is Georgie, and I was recently diagnosed with selective mutism at 26 years old.
When you’re an identical twin, people are quick to want to categorise you. I was born second, which can be interpreted in different ways based on mythological accounts of twinship. Some people see it as an indication of being the ‘weaker’ sibling – with the first-born being the dominant one – a myth so influential that my Dad didn’t want us to ever find out who was born first. I was also much smaller than my sister because we had twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, meaning I was deprived of blood whereas my sister had too much. As we grew up, it was clear that I was much shier than her, something which fits in perfectly with this worldview on twinship, and something which suited me. I didn’t really resent this or want to change it. My difficulties were never picked up on in primary school – I don’t remember ever feeling the levels of anxiety I would go on to feel in high school. I think my shyness was just put down to my being in a twinship; I didn’t mind having someone else speak for me. I think it helped that I was able to make some friends, which meant my social and communication difficulties were never really flagged. It has always been group settings where my mutism is most apparent.
By the time I reached high school, my shyness seemed to develop into something more debilitating. During lessons, I began to be aware of my difficulties with speaking up for myself to voice basic needs because I feared drawing attention to myself – things like going to the toilet halfway through lessons became an insurmountable challenge for me in a way I don’t really recall in primary school. I would rather sit in pain and extreme discomfort than raise my hand to ask to leave a lesson. I was discharged from my NHS orthodontic treatment because I was unable to speak up in a lesson to ask to leave early and missed one too many appointments as a result. I felt invisible, and I honestly wanted to remain that way. Meanwhile, my sister, who attended a different high school due to health issues, was bold, brassy and loudmouthed. Bafflingly, people at my school seemed to know who she was, whereas there were members of my year who genuinely would not have been able to tell you my name. It was almost inconceivable that we could be related, let alone identical twins. She was constantly getting into trouble for causing disruption, meanwhile I was so quiet I struggled even with answering my name during the register. I spent seven full years in education being referred to by a name I didn’t even go by in my day-to-day life because I was never able to correct my teachers. I envied the students who could so freely advocate for themselves and express their needs. To me, it seemed an impossibility.
My difficulties became increasingly more noticeable, particularly during lessons where I would be called on by teachers. Despite being incredibly conscientious at school and caring deeply about doing well, being called on to answer a question would trigger this freeze response I just couldn’t understand. It caused me to fall silent, even if I actually knew the answer – a cycle of extreme embarrassment for both myself, my classmates, and the mortified and usually well-meaning teacher, who had asked something extremely obvious to try and coax a response out of me.
I remember being 15 in a Spanish lesson with a teacher who had clearly recently taken a course on how to encourage the quiet but hardworking members of the class to engage more in discussions. She called on me, asking me to come up to the front and engage in an interactive spoken game in Spanish. My heart sank, and I froze. I stopped for a moment, kept my head down, and eventually managed to tell her I didn’t want to, something which surprised even me. I was the student consistently described as a ‘pleasure to teach’ in class, and my defiance did not sit well with this teacher in particular. Her reaction, somewhat archaic, was to punish the entire class, forcing us to rote-learn grammar for the last half an hour of the session. She explained that since one student was refusing to participate, nobody else in the class was allowed to enjoy playing the game. Other students stood up for me, claiming this was deeply unfair. They argued that I had the right to say no and that it was out of shyness, not defiance, that I resisted. I was mortified, confused, and deeply frustrated with both myself and my teacher.
The cycle continued into my A Levels at college. Another similar situation happened with a teacher in a history lesson, where I was called up to the front to answer a question. I had begun to come out of my shell a bit more in college and didn’t resist in the same way as in my Spanish class. Clearly, this teacher had taken the same course on class participation and encouraging student inclusion as my Spanish teacher in high-school, and I clearly fit the criteria of the type of student to target exceptionally well. The task required me to highlight a section of the board and verbally explain my reasoning. I froze. I simply couldn’t process anything being said to me because all I could register was my intense panic, and to this day I have absolutely no idea what the question even was. I felt stupid, and worse – broken, because nobody around me seemed to struggle with this in the same way I did, even the other students with anxiety disorders who I remember trying to help me in that moment. I couldn’t register what their gestures and mouthing of words meant because all I could process was my fear.
Returning to my high school experience, I think the most memorable and painful interaction was with students I sat next to on the front row of our year 11 English class. I have always loved English and went on to study it at University. However, my memories of this class were tainted by the loud, confident students I had clearly been strategically placed next to, a canon shy autistic girl experience. Unable to read any of my work out loud, I sat and listened, mouth agape, as the girl on my row whose work I had just swapped with my own during a peer review exercise read mine out loud as her own because she knew I wouldn’t object. The three students around me regularly shouted over me, as though I wasn’t there. I kept my head down as much as I possibly could because being an obstruction was not exactly a nice feeling. One lesson, the boy to my right, frustrated by this separation from his good friends, begged to be moved, claiming his isolation on the end of our row was unfair because ‘Georgia never has anything to say’ (which, again, didn’t really register with me at first because that’s my full name and I have never properly gone by it in my life). This sentiment – these words – have stayed with me all these years, and in writing this piece I hope to reclaim them. It was never that I didn’t have anything to say; I was simply unable to say it out loud in specific contexts. I have so much to say and such a strong desire for it to be heard.
I have, on occasion, tried forcing myself to speak. The most recent example was during a university seminar during my Master’s last year. I had prepared meticulously, all my notes written out clearly in front of me on a subject I knew inside out. I had decided I could do it and nothing would stop me. This, of course, was before I even knew about selective mutism. I had told myself it was a choice I was making. There were only 8 people on my course, and even this was enough to suddenly make my mind turn blank. I can only describe the level of fear I was experiencing as being the same terror someone might experience when being chased by a pack of wolves. I froze halfway through, apologised and explained I was nervous, and managed to say approximately a third of what I wanted to. I ruminated on it for months afterwards, despite assurances that I had somehow managed to articulate myself well, and typing out and posting the rest of what I had wanted to say on our online discussion forum when I got home.
My frustrations are embedded in the fear that my peers think I am incapable or careless when I feel, deep down, I am the opposite. I am incredibly passionate about what I study. In front of the right people, I could talk about my passions for hours, often needing to be playfully told to shut up by my close friends because I’ve been yapping instead of eating and the café is actually about to close. People assume someone diagnosed with SM must be exceptionally shy and passive in all situations; I would love some of these people to see me on a night out dancing with my friends or standing up to someone in a situation where I feel there has been an injustice.
Selective mutism is so fundamentally misunderstood; I would give anything to be able to speak freely in situations, much like a university seminar room, where I regularly want to voice my ideas. I hope, one day, now that I have the right support, I will eventually be able to do so. Or, at the very least, I hope to get to the stage where I can be kinder to myself and accept I am doing the best I can with the cards I’ve been dealt.
