I had an epiphany today regarding my speech. I realized that any action that should be unconscious, like breathing for example, gets screwed up and falters to some degree when we think of it…when we become conscious of it. 

I think most people would argue that speaking is somewhat of an unconscious act. Sure, we need to think about what we are going to say, but the physical act of opening our mouth, taking a breath, and letting words flow out should be an unconscious act for the most part. 

It seems to me that my stuttering is really only there because I make it a completely conscious act. I think about it. I think about every little breath, tongue movement, mouth movement, tounge placement on my words and sounds; I think about the entire process and it overtakes my brain to some extent. I make the mostly unconscious act of talking, completely and utterly conscious. It occured to me this is almost like an obsession. 

Then, I noticed, not only do I obsess over how the words and sounds are going to come out; I obsess over what others will think when and IF my words do come out a little disfluent. Then, to make matters worse, when these words do come out anything less than perfectly fluent, I internally freak out. I think to myself, “you sound really stupid!” or I think “they’re probably thinking youre mentally challenged right about now”. 

Today I realized that kind of thinking is completely and utterly worthless! I need to stop. And I am sure many of you who stutter need to stop it as well because its only feeding the monster and continuing the cycle of negative thoughts, obessing over our speech, and speaking with disfluencies. 

I also noticed something else over the past two days. Nobody thinks I am mentally challenged. Nobody bursts out laughing the minute I am disfluent. Nobody walks away while I am in mid-sentence because I stuttered. What is the worst that could happen?! I have built it up in my head that each time I stutter, the world is going to come crashing down around me…and that simply is not the case. 

Here is the decision I have come to: The worst thing that could happen is I have a moment of disflunecy, I may face a little shame or embarassment for it (which is something I am working to overcome), and then I will move on with what I am saying. The world will not end. People will not walk away. Nobody will start calling you names right then and there (unless theyre a middle school child or something of an extremely low emotional maturity). Nobody cares that I stutter. If anything, they are interested. They want to know more about it and they want to be helpful. 

Today, I had a complete change of thought process on the whole ordeal, and one that was extremely positive. I am very excited now about what is to come because I can only imagine how much this change in thinking will positively effect my speaking :)