Hi Everyone,

I apologize for not keeping up with this blog. When I began it I was really excited about it and I sincerely believed I would be able to write on it regularly. It seems to be a talent of mine to take on more than I have enough time for in one day, and for that I apologize. But now I am graduating from college (finally, after taking time off) and I am diving head first into my speech work and to say that I am excited about it is an understatement. 

I do not want this blog to be all about me though. That isnt my focus here. Well, in a sense it is, because I am trying to document my stuttering. But not just for the sake of documenting myself. I am doing it because maybe, at some point, whether its in 6 months or 5 years from now, I can help someone. Even if its just one person, then I have achieved the goal I set out to achieve by starting this blog. 

Well, I still stutter. But I also have not been working on it at all. One thing I learned about myself- I have a lot of pride. Sometimes I wonder if I almost have too much pride and am too stubborn to work on it. Working on it, makes me feel like I have a problem, like theres something wrong with me. Feeling like theres something wrong with me, interferes with my pride and stubbornness, and upsets me, so I walk away. This is probably just me being me, and may not be the same with any other stutterer in the world…although Im sure many people can be stubborn and let their pride get the best of them :) 

I think I have learned over the past year and a half since I last posted on here, is that stuttering, at least for me, has SO much to do with my mindset. Even the smallest slip up on a sound, I start beating myself up. I would argue that I am not the only stutterer who does this. Its not like we particularly like being noticed for talking somewhat disfluently; nobody likes to be noticed for something that may not be socially acceptable. But that is why it is up to us to accept ourselves for whoever and whatever we are. Whether its stuttering or not, we need to learn to accept it, to some degree or another. I realize this is much easier said than done; nobody can accept something overnight that they most likely have been feeling negatively about for years. 

If anybody is even reading this anymore, I’d be interested to get people to comment on the bottom about how long they have stuttered, and in that time frame, how many of those years they’ve spent “beating themselves up” or viewing themselves negatively, whether its viewing themselves that way as a whole, or just their speech. I’d be interested to hear this because I would bet that many of us have spent more of our time stuttering thinking negatively about it rather than positively.

As they say for people who have problems with drugs or alcohol, the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem. Well, I do not think this applies to us. Let me explain. I think that stuttering is in part due to the fact that at some point, we started labeling ourselves. We started thinking, “I am not okay. There is something wrong with me”. And we mentally put ourselves in this tiny box, apart from the rest of the world, and on the outside of the box we wrote in big red permanent marker “I am different” and let the world see it. I am not saying we completely created this for ourselves, but we gave in to the label. And it is that label that I personally believe contributes to the “stuttering mindset”. 

Try to accept your stutter and see if it improves at all. Sometimes, I will literally tell myself, in my head of course, not outloud :), to just “stop it!”. I essentially yell at myself in my head to “stop it”- to stop beating myself up. To stop seeing myself as different. To stop all of the negative thoughts. Because they are so extremely counterproductive! And after I do that, I smile, first of all because nobody knows I just essentially yelled at myself in my head and I find that semi-amusing. But second of all, because it works. Once I do that, I am able to take a deep breath, calm down, lower my racing heartbeat, and continue speaking, but this time, fluently.

Maybe if we all can just “stop it”, we would be a little bit more fluent. Just a thought :)

Does anyone else do something similar to this? 

I will be posting on this regularly from now on. I am very excited about it. And I hope that someone, somewhere, even if its just one person, is reading this. And I hope I can someday, when ever that day may be, help somebody :)

Jen