May 30 Meeting Update: Connect

One of the high points of our support group meeting yesterday was a great story that a group member shared. He was in a coffee shop one day when he noticed two young women, both blind, helping each other to order and find a table. He approached them and introduced himself. He let them know that he was a stutterer and that he was interested to find out what their greatest challenge was as blind persons.

Whether or not you stutter, it takes a lot of courage to approach another person and connect with him or her in an open and honest way. If you do stutter, the difficulty is compounded. We're often afraid that "normal" people will laugh at us, be condescending, rude and dismissive. But we forget that nobody is really "normal." We all have problems, insecurities, flaws. Look hard enough and you'll find something "abnormal" in everyone. The only difference is that some kinds of "abnormal" are easier to hide than others.

Having a stutter isn't easy to hide. Neither is being blind. It's all out there for everyone to see. And many "normal" people who come face to face with it--who have to listen to someone struggle his way through a sentence, or watch a blind person find his or her way--often handle it badly. They freak out. They're reminded of their own insecurities, and, to cover up their discomfort, they laugh, condescend and dismiss. Do you want to know what the young women's biggest challenge was as blind persons? People think that because they're blind, they're stupid.

That's a lot of people's knee-jerk reaction: equate whatever seems "abnormal" with stupidity. Now how stupid is that? Remember this next time someone is rude to you because you stutter. Remember that you aren't alone--there aren't only hundreds of other stutterers who are fighting the good fight to stand up for themselves, but many other hundreds of people who are blind or deaf, challenged in their bodies and minds in many other ways, who are also fighting that fight.

The best way to diffuse a situation in which someone is reacting stupidly when they watch you struggle is to educate them. Tell them what it's really like. Connect with them in as open and honest a way as a you can. That's enormously hard to do when you're feeling attacked by a mean or angry comment. But behind that anger and meanness often hides someone who is afraid, who is simply ignorant, who has forgotten that deep down we're all the same, flawed and yearning to be accepted just as we are.

May 14 Meeting Update: Emotions and Speech

Posted by Matt

At our Monday, May 14th meeting at the Kaiser Medical Offices in Irvine, we discussed successes we had with our speech over the last few months. Over the last several months our discussions have been on pausing, sliding on non-feared words, reading out loud, eye contact, continuous phonation, etc. Several people have had success in reading and eye contact from the advice of others.

We talked about our biggest challenges. A main topic was the fear we have of what people think when we stutter. We are so consumed by that fear that it controls our mind in a negative matter. An important thing to remember is that if you ask people about how they feel about us stuttering, they don't really care. People have enough issues to deal with on their own--school, work, dating etc... Basically, they don't care. We are our own biggest threat. These issues may be difficult to get over, but the fact is once we accept it, we can move on and things will improve.

Lastly, I handed out a self evaluation form with 10 questions about rating our anxiety level when reading alone or in front of a group, ordering food, using the phone, introducing ourselves etc. The goal was to identify areas where we see a need to improve. Each of us put down a strategy to improve these and to write about those experiences each week. We'll talk about them next month's meeting in June.

We had a response to the above from a speech therapist who works with children. It is insightful and we thought we'd share it:

I am a Speech Pathologist who has been attending the NSA TWST group in Irvine with one of my students and his mother.  Reading your notes from your last meeting prompted me to share something that I heard from Dr. Yaruss (a speech pathologist who often presents on stuttering) that has stuck with me for many years.  He discussed the emotional factors of stuttering as one of the most important points to address in therapy.  He explained that everyone needs to have a positive self image (those who stutter and those who do not).  If you have that type of self image, others cannot successfully tease or bully you.  People are quick to learn what issues you feel "shame" about and target those areas.  For him, he stated no one could tease him about being bald no matter what was said as he felt no shame.  However, if a statement was made about his weight, that would effect him... as that was his "shame issue."  I try to really push this idea in my therapy sessions with students I work with.  It is, of couse, easier said than done, but I feel it is good food for thought.  Additionally, when self advertisement is used, it takes away the fear that the listener will find out the speaker stutters as well as gives the listener a heads up that he/she might see the speaker stutter- decreasing anxiety for both parties.

One example I have is with my student who attends the TWST group... He was on the playground 6 years ago as a 2nd grader when he was engaged by another student (who I happened to be observing).  The student I was observing challenged the boy who stutters about what happened in the game that was being played.  The boy who stuttered answered him exhibiting multiple repetitions.  The student I was observing said that he (the boy who stutters) lied because his dad told him people who don't give answers with smooth speech are lying.  The student who stutters confidently said, "I'm not lying, I just stutter!"  The issue was dropped as the boy I was observing had no come-back.