November 20, 2013 Meeting Update

At this Wednesday night meeting of the South Orange County NSA group, although there were only 3 members present, it was an interesting & enjoyable evening. (For those of you who didn't attend - you know this goes on your permanent record don't you? You can redeem yourselves by attending next time.) One attendee was a new member from San Gabriel who works in Irvine. We began with introductions where people stated what they would do if they won 100 million dollars in the lottery. Two people said they would invest the money and/or buy properties. The third member said it would allow his wife to retire. We can all dream, right?

This was another "Public Speaking" session using Table Topics. Members were free to use any fluency techniques they were working on. The Table Topics subjects were: "Gaming: Your ThoughtsOn It",  "The Best Book You Ever Read" & "What You Would Do If You Knew An 8.0 Earthquake Was Going To Hit In 30 Minutes." Some lively discussions followed. The person who had the earthquake topic said there is a species of fish that live in very deep ocean water where there are tectonic plates. When the plates rub against each other as they do preceding an earthquake, the fish are forced to the surface & can sometimes be found on beaches. Some of these beached fish have been recently found on California beaches. Is "The Big One" coming? The person who had the gaming topic knew practically nothing about it, but thought excessive gaming may be taking the place of human interaction for some gamers.

The familiar subject of how hard it is to transfer fluency techniques from the speech therapist's safe environment to the "real" world was discussed. This may be one area where all persons who stutter agree.

We talked a little on what helps us in general to be fluent. The new person said he has a non-stuttering friend who talks very slowly. When he is with this friend, it helps him greatly in improving his fluency.

We also talked a little on the effect of foreign languages on stuttering, as each person has a foreign language in their background - Chinese, Spanish or Italian. We pretty much agreed that stutterers stutter the same amount in whatever language they use.

The next Wednesday meeting is scheduled for December 18. However, it may be canceled as it is very close to the holidays and attendance would probably be low or even zero, with only the group leader showing up. Emails will go out as usual if the meeting is cancelled.

Happy Thanksgiving. Drive carefully. Don't watch too much football. Don't drink too much. Don't eat too much turkey - for you vegans/vegetarians, it's hard to eat too much tofu, so go ahead & indulge yourselves in a soy orgy.

Article: "What It Actually Feels Like to Stutter"

I ran across this Huffington Post article, written by a woman who stutters, and thought it very honest and insightful. She writes so well about that moment after a period of fluency, when you get stuck and it's so easy to lose hope and give up. But she just "picks up [the ball] and serves" it back!

November 11 Meeting Update: Full Disclosure

We had a larger than normal group meeting and I wanted to share the article "Stuttering and the Power of Powerless Communication" again since many haven’t read it. This was a major topic for last month's meeting.  After taking turns reading a paragraph, we discussed what people thought.  What was interesting was that a few didn’t agree: if you suffer from severe stuttering, you’ll never be in a commanding position to insight dialogue.

After our normal introductions and brief update on what’s going on, we transitioned into the questions, “What do you do for a career and what are your biggest challenges you face at the job?”  The group was eager to aid in ideas to better that person’s situation.  The phone, giving your name and directing people in a group setting were the biggest challenges. 

The group's thoughts related to the phone were “Don’t fear it.”  Learn to master it by using it.  At the beginning of the phone call, let the person know that you’d like to take a little more time to make sure you get all the information.  Pause a bit more to collect your thoughts and lastly, take control.  If you’re calm and collected, you’ll be able to lead the conversation and take charge of the call by shaping the direction you want it to go.  What’s better, you’ll be able to comprehend the conversation and be in the moment. 

A seed developed throughout the meeting into the idea of full disclosure.  Many of us in the group have been covert stutterers for many years and not able to reach out to find others like us.  What surprised me was how many young people are able to understand and deal with this.  Facebook, YouTube and the web have aided this.  Being open and honest about our stuttering in life, with friends and even in a job interview has allowed us to be cool with it.  Full Disclosure is our pass to taking control.

October 30 Meeting Update

At this Wednesday night meeting of the NSA Orange County South group, 5 members were present. One brave soul showed up on crutches - nothing stops some NSA members from meetings. We began with introductions, where people stated where they were originally from & what was their first car. Members were originally from: California, Texas, New Jersey, Slovakia & Mexico. Everyone easily remembered their first car & had detailed memories about it. This was another public speaking meeting, but this time we did "Table Topics" instead of reading from a prepared text. For the uninitiated, Table Topics consists of each member writing down a topic on a piece of paper. The papers are then put together & each person picks one out randomly. Each person then speaks on the topic on his piece of paper. Only caveat is you can't talk on the topic you wrote down. Each person had about 10 minutes to speak. The topics were interesting & included "Are Some People Born Evil?",  "Exercise" & "Have You Been Hiking & Where." People were encouraged to use any fluency techniques they may be working on while speaking on their topic. Another spontaneous subject that arose was how some TV shows are addictive especially "Breaking Bad."

Because of Thanksgiving,  the next Wednesday meeting will be on November 20, & will go from 7:00 to 8:15 PM.

Hope everybody had a good Halloween.