2018 Speech Reflections

To kick off the end of the year and get into the whole “new year new goals new me” mojo, I’m sharing my reflections on my speech therapy this past year! 

A little background on why I worked on the goals that I did:

I grew up feeling ashamed and embarrassed of my stutter. I wasn’t bullied or teased into these feelings; I literally brought them upon myself because I wanted to sound perfect when I spoke (thanks brain!). I felt that because I stuttered, I didn’t sound confident, knowledgeable, intelligent or what have you, so I began hiding my stutter. ARTS focuses on peeling back those layers of tricks so you are left with your “raw” stutter, and can desensitize to those feelings of shame, so eventually you can stutter without having a care in the world! 

With that, the goals I focused on in Spring 2018 included: 

1. Explaining my speech therapy rationale to more people
2. Hold eye contact during a stutter
3. Reduce frequency of unproductive inhalations (not take in a breath every time I felt a stutter coming on)

Goal #1: Met. Obviously, since I’m blogging about my stutter to the internet! Even before I made this blog, I opened up about the rationale about ARTS to extended family and coworkers, which is something I never felt comfortable doing before. I always mentioned I was in speech therapy, but never went into detail about what I actually do in it. So, that + creating this blog = goal double met!

Goal #2: In progress. I became more comfortable holding eye contact with my immediate family and boyfriend. You might be thinking it’s weird that I’m afraid to hold eye contact with the people I’m closest to, but that’s what 23 years of self- shaming will do to ya! I’d say I can maintain eye contact about 90% of the time with my little inner circle!

Goal #3: In progress. Somehow, I subconsciously trained myself to inhale whenever I felt a stutter coming on, which lead to choppy. speech. like. this., and it was exhausting! I began vvvvoluntary sssstuttering (that’s the best way I can show it via keyboard) on my own to teach my body to stutter in a more forward-moving way without the unnecessary inhalations. It’s definitely a work in progress!

Fall 2018 goals: 

1. Desensitizing to feelings of shame through completing shame-busting activities
2. Hold eye contact during more feared stutters
3. Getting on the sound during silent blocks 

Goal #1: Met. Again, creating this blog was a huge step toward this goal! A shame-busting activity is exactly what it sounds like; doing something that intentionally makes you feel shame. Some activities I did included showing longer, uglier-sounding stutters to coworkers, showing more open stuttering during professional interviews, and voluntary stuttering while making phone calls. 

Goal #2: In progress. Eye contact, I’ve discovered, will take a while for me to be totally comfortable with. I’ve had moments where I can hold eye contact with someone during a short stutter, but if it gets long and uglier-sounding, I tend to break it. 

Goal #3: In progress. Getting on the sound during blocks is both a shame-busting activity and an exercise to reduce those unproductive inhalations that I was working on (and still am) from last spring. It’s a goal that’s still in progress because getting on the sound entails making really ugly-sounding speech, which is taking me a while to get comfortable with!

All in all, I must say I am pretty darn proud of the progress I’ve made! Some of it is baby steps and will take a while longer to get to where I want to be, but hey, ya gotta start somewhere! Thanks for reading this super long and super personal post. I hope this was inspiring enough for y’all to finish up 2018 by reaching some of your own personal goals! 

xoxo,