postr/StutterJune 20, 2024

does it sound like I need speech therapy?

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does it sound like I need speech therapy? Hi! I 16f have always struggled with my speech, specifically with reading out loud. I don’t (usually) have the typical stutter that most think about when they talk about stuttering, instead of having trouble saying the starts of my words ‘p-p-pie’ i often get ‘tongue tied’ and am unable to say certain words properly. According to my friends I have a really unique voice (my voice is high pitched but not in a typical way?) and speech pattern; 1. I commonly get quiet/mumble during certain parts of my sentences which means a lot of the times when I talk to people they can’t hear everything I say. When i’m ranting i’m really hard to follow along with, so during arguments people will just stop me halfway because they have no idea what i’m even trying to say. 2. I was looking at an old video of myself doing a presentation, and it was really clear to me that at certain parts of my speech I would - randomly go quiet to the point where I couldn’t hear the words I was saying and I sometimes mispronounced words/pronounced it in a way where idk it sounded under developed?? (think like ‘brwoder’ instead of ‘brother’ or ‘crasmanship instead of craftsmenship’) - I would talk so fast that my words would be mixed entirely together to the point where it becomes a new word (‘what i care about the most —> w-icareaboutthemost’). 3. Like I mentioned before, I stammer on my words because i’ll mispronounce them and be unable to pronounce them properly. (Ex: “I need to Stwop- Stwop- Stwop- Stop doing this”) All of this gets especially bad when i’m reading out loud, even though I read pretty fast in my head, when i’m speaking out loud based on a script it’s like my brain works faster than my mouth. I change the meanings of sentences by mindlessly adding words into the sentence that weren’t in the script (“bow and arrows” instead of “bow and earrings”, “most unhelpful” instead of “most helpful”). I believe all of this is affecting the way people perceive me as people are always seeing me as childlike, not rational, overreacting and many assume I wasn’t born in a western-english speaking country because of the way I speak english (I was) I cry everyday over my voice and speech. Everytime I have bad days where I stammer a lot, I come home feeling so defeated. I also have a lot of similar qualities as my younger brother down to how we act our interests and how we look. I see a lpt of the talking styles I had when I was younger in him, and he’s been getting speech therapy from his school for months so idk maybe thats another sign Even worse, I have slow processing so during conversations I sound so unnatural talking to people. One time I was talking to a friend and I accidentally recorded all of it, and there’d be random pauses where its obvious I was thinking about what to ask before asking. My friend sounded so done with me, especially because the way I asked it sounded so unnatural, no idea if this was the right subreddit to go to but hey any advice is better than none!

Themes

Anticipation & AvoidanceCauses & VariabilityEmotional ExperienceSchool & Work

Subthemes

Avoidance & SubstitutionOverthinking & MonitoringSeverity & FluctuationShame & EmbarrassmentSadness & HopelessnessSchool & Academic Life