Impacts of Stuttering
Hi my name is Julia Reeves and I am a SLP grad student who is currently taking a fluency course. I am curious about how stuttering impacts your everyday life and if there was one aspect about your stuttering that you could change, what would that be? With the questions just asked, has a therapist ever addressed the questions above and if so, were they’re conversations and activities in therapy beneficial?
Hi Julia! Indeed stuttering is there and obviously impacts my everyday life; the instinct to avoid speaking situations is always the automatic response for me, the automatic planning of what do I say is always there, so it’s like I need to choose every day and every moment if I avoid or not. Nevertheless, in time it becomes more clear, meaning – in time, avoiding becomes less of a valid option (still not easier – but clearer). If I could change one thing about my stuttering, I would definitely wish to reduce struggle. Because my stuttering is very “strugglish”. Sadly, back in the day when I went to countless therapies, it was mainly fluency-shaping and it didn’t address anything I really needed 🙂
Hi Julia
If you would have asked me in my teens, I would have told you EVERY SINGLE MOMENT. Every word I spoke was based on fear and shame. Every word I didn’t speak was based on weighing whether I would expose myself to fear and shame, or to not speak at all. Today I no longer care. I’m older, I know my words matter, and I’m tough enough to tell people to show respect when they don’t. The more fear and shame decreased, the better I spoke. I still stutter, I still hear that little voice on my shoulder telling me “Oops you did it again, what will s/he think”, but now people know and respect me, as I now own my stutter and made it one of my characteristics, something that just is. This is what I wished for previous speech therapists to tell me. That I’m good enough. That I can speak and have the right to do so. That I should not aim for fluency, but to aim for wanting to speak, no matter how. And to help me “fix” those around me to see and accept me for my personality and qualities, and help me see those too.
The one thing I still struggle with is to relax my body when speaking. When I talk a lot I get so tense, I get a migraine and even hiccups!
Keep them talking
Anita