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What obstacles have you had to overcome as a person who has a stutter?
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What obstacles have you had to overcome as a person who has a stutter?
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The biggest obstacle I have had to confront and challenge myself to do is desensitize myself against the fear of stuttering, which for my story means that the fear of stuttering was always greater for me than the actual stuttering moments.
The fear of course is fear of judgement and fear of rejection. I think these may be universal beliefs held by many people who stutter.
Pam
My biggest obstacle was to accept myself as I am, with my stutter. I realised that it is not bad to stutter. The most important things is to be able to do what we want to do, our stutter may even be an ally for some challenges.
The difficulty is that stutter may affect your whole life, but most of the time, the solution is in accepting who we are and let go shame, fear and other protective behaviours. It can have great impact on your personal, professional, and hobbies life
Best,
Mounah
The biggest obstacle is learning to accept that you are a person that has a level of speech dysfluency and then trying to change the way I process that in my head. Realising that I am my own worst critic and that I control the way I judge myself as a dysfluent speaker. Understanding that it is OK to be dysfluent and stop trying to hide it. Recovery starts when one stops hiding their disability and actually talks about it with others. Disclosure is a major factor in improvement. Realising that it is my own judgmental thoughts about myself that I am bouncing off the listener. Realising that is critcal. Learn to be less judgmental of others shortcomings and as a result then becoming less judgmental of oneself. Stuttering is a thinking problem that is manifesting as a speaking problem. Change the thoughts and you will change the experience.
My biggest obstacle was people. People who told me I wasn’t good enough. That my stutter was something wrong. That I wouldn’t get anywhere anyway. How could I accept my stutter and myself, if noone else did? What happened next is in my paper in this year’s online conference. 🙂 https://isad.live/isad-2020/papers-presented-by/stories-and-experiences-with-stuttering-by-pws/there-are-no-failures-just-life-lessons-anita-blom/
Stay safe and keep them talking
Anita
Great question! My biggest obstacle as a PWS is establishing meaning relationships with people.
I was very ashamed of my stutter growing up and built a thick shell/wall around myself. I am not very good at approaching people and fear judgment and rejection a lot. Now I’m older, it’s less fearful to tell about and show people my stutter but it still takes me a long time to open up and establish meaningful relationships.
The greatest obstacle I have overcome is accepting myself as a PWS.
My stammer was more covert in nature and the solution was to overcome the negative internalized feelings that came with it.I now had to become open about my stammer which was a very difficult thing to do initially. Overcoming the fear of stammering, disclosing and overcoming the shame and embarrassment of stammering were hard nuts I had to crack.
Elias.