Just my story in how I found a public/speaking career and KIND OF overcame my stutter (but still stutter all the time)
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Just my story in how I found a public/speaking career and KIND OF overcame my stutter (but still stutter all the time) These posts are mostly therapy for the OP but maybe someone will get something from it. Stuttered bad all my life, tons of therapy, struggled so bad with CSR jobs at Blockbuster (where I had to answer the fuckin phone and say "Thank you for calling Blockbuster my name is S..." and I stutter on TH, B, and S sounds). In college I had to take a foreign language and picked sign language. I wound up answering a job for an in-class kindergarten deaf assistant and just started working that, moved into ESL assistant at a junior high and then in 2013 I moved abroad to China to be a teacher. Moving abroad was 100% depression motivated. I was charismatic enough and had supportive friends and family so I had girlfriends and such but I could never get over my stuttering. I actually drove taxi as a part time job as a "I don't need to talk" job. But shit went South and this was an option. Being a teacher in a non-native country meant all my awkward word replacements and stammering was not a problem at all. I even got to use a lot of awesome new ones. "I was going to the, oh, what's the word......*thinking, thinking*... shopping mall when..." I got to speak slowly and loudly for a living. I developed a habit of calling every one of my students Mr. and Ms. XYZ because Eric was impossible to say but Mr. Eric? No problem! And my coworkers for 95% foreigners as well and the native coworkers who teachers who are super concerned with bullying and generally leaned Liberal so they had the patience. Over the past 10 years I just busted my ass. Got my teaching license, my Masters, spearheaded anti bullying programs, and just got super good at my job. I got more successful and confident and confident and successful and I won't go into it but next semester I'll be moving into the job of my dreams, leading the entire student culture and behavior programs of a very awesome school. I still stutter all the time. I can't tell jokes very well. I can't recite movie lines. But my wife's name doesn't start with a block sound. I am thinking of moving back to the US next year with my wife and it does terrify me. To continue teaching with native speaker students is a new thing for me but I THINK and HOPE the attitude of HS students in 2024 is a lot better than 1994.