Running into problems that I can’t avoid anymore.
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Running into problems that I can’t avoid anymore. Ok so I want to start out by saying I have a mild to moderate stutter. I’m 18 and going off to college soon and for the most part stuttering has given me very minimal problems. I’ve had girlfriends, I can get jobs and I’m fairly social when people get to know me(I’m very grateful of this because I suffered from a severe stutter as a kid and know how bad that is ) Because of this, I’ve neglected trying to improve my stutter and have been leaning on my very refined skill of finding words and phrases around blocks; For instance if I can’t say car, I will say automobile. Anyways, its been getting progressively worse over the last year and I’m losing ways of finding my way around blocks. I think it correlates with my confidence slowly diminishing. From my experience, stuttering is all in your head (well it is for me ) I know this because when I would go in for jobs or talk to a cute girl I usually do fairly well it with minimal errors. But ever since my girlfriend -at the time - called me out on my stuttering getting worse, it’s gotten exceedingly worse from that point. For years I told my self people didn’t care about how I spoke and that it isn’t that bad but as soon as she said that, something in my head snapped. I lost the confidence I had and now I suddenly cared about how I spoke. This is starting to affect my life now and I can’t avoid it. There are a few instances in the last month that really stand out to me: the first one was when I was at work and I was cleaning a fryer and this really cute girl approached me. Normally, I wouldn’t panic but my mentality isn’t the same so as soon as she came towards me I already knew I would screw up.. she asked me if I was new- I said yes and that I was leaving for college soon (so far so good) then she asked me what my name was and I froze. I couldn’t say my name and this has been a huge problem in the last month that I’ve never had and it’s beyond frustrating. Anyways, after I froze I realized that I had to get around my name block and said the first name that popped into my head.. “Steve”. Hopefully she overlooked the slight pause but unfortunately I don’t think she’s going to overlook the fake name I gave her. The next day she started talking to the other girls at work and realized that my name is Austen and now she just gives me this dirty look. This occurrence made me lose so much sleep. Not only because of how embarrassed I was but because I started to realize how bad this stutter might affect me later in life. What if I opt out of speaking with girl of my dreams just because I can’t talk ? What if I cant get a job or even function at said job? I want to be a lawyer and work with my dad but every day I wake up the more I see that dream drift away. I can’t even say “thanks “ any more and that makes me look so rude and it kills me, because I want to say thanks more than anything! I’ve decided that I’m going to speech therapy and I was wondering if y’all have any techniques that can help me? Or any thing that can get my confidence back ? If you read all this - thank you for your time ! :)