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A talk about presentations Hi guys. So one thing I was really trying to wrap my head around was how, in North America atleast, presentations are mandatory throughout school: first it starts with theatrical plays when you are very young, then it becomes speeches every year for maybe 3 years straight, then presentations in highschool and further in University or college; in my experience (as I have been through every level of school now) it seems that they get more and more grander and complicated and important (which to the psychosocial stutterer is likely scary haha). The reason I was confused is not solely because I am a stutterer. ​ Over the past 4 years I have had all sorts of mental health problems related to stuttering such as depression, general anxiety, and newly and worst of all social anxiety (which seriously is something I never thought my life would bring me to). I have a mental health team that I can address concerns and this was how this conversation went with a mental health professional: ​ I said "Regardless of my speech and my proclivity towards speech anxiety, why on earth are presentations mandatory because let's first agree that irrefutably there is a large population that deals with some sort of general and/or social anxiety not to mention the cliche/truth that most individuals feel anxious before a crowd. The reason this matters is because one of the reasons (or maybe the main reason) is that they are anxious is due to the possibility of social humiliation. My problem is that there are individuals who will become so anxious that it actually does interfere/inhibit their performance which you could imagine would spell social anxious disaster on stage. This will only make the individual more fearful - to make matters worse, we know that if you are afraid of something that in order to become less afraid or more brave in the face of danger that the individual must face their fear in extremely small chunks until they gather the courage to face the fear at its highest peak of uncomfort; the reason I bring this up is because it actually matters whether we VOLUNTARILY confront the danger such as a presentations versus being INVOLUNTARILY told that you MUST do a presentation. We do know that when giving a presentation that those who are defined as on the edge between anxious and excited that they perform the best. So being an individual who is anxious about presenting (many individuals) but, those individuals in particular who involuntarily are put into the situation I find you could make the case it does more harm than good" - as a final note if you are a stutterer and had been forced to do presentations and you felt you humiliated yourself due to stuttering I am beyond sorry you had to go through that. ​ The response from the mental health practitioner really surprised me. She said: "You know what. I agree with you. I don't agree that presentations should be mandatory and I think that in society we have people who gravitate towards those types of people who want to speak on topics they find important and more importantly they feel motivated to do it". ​ I thought as an individual who suffers from social anxiety and stuttering (60% of stutterers) that this may resonate with some of the stutterers who feel that mandatory presentations are ... unjust. I know that there seem to be two types of stutterers in this forum which seems to be the virtue signallers who say "you can do anything with a stutter!" to the more realistic and less naive people who think that stuttering is something we would like to eradicate due to motives of preventing additional suffering. ​ One last thing: I am a covert stutterer. I was (I guess gratefully) given the ability to speak with little interference in my speech by the time I was in grade 11. It doesn't matter though because I still suffer from all sorts of "negative" thinking related to my speech (psycholological schemas) that has affected my school choices, career paths, romantic partners, and ultimately quality of life. I am a firm believer that the buddhists have it right when they say life is suffering and I think most often it only adds to be a stutterer. I believe that if given the opportunity any stutterer, no matter the severity, would gladly jump at the opportunity to be permanently fluent - and yet, our only hope seems to be ecopipam clinical trial results. ​ Nietzsche believed in what's called the superior man or something like that, which is very attractive and from what I have read it seems the superior man is one who overcomes himself. If you are a stutterer and you're like "I seriously can't do this. It is so hard for me to stutter infront of people" I completely understand. But maybe you will be motivated to "overcome stuttering". All I want to leave with is that I believe stuttering should be considered a disability for those who struggle and want help. I find the criteria for this is extremely restrictive (they pretty much say you have to be so impaired in your speech that you physically can't work) which in my mental health experience with stuttering (not the stuttering itself) I find hard to agree with because I, like 60% of my stuttering friends have social anxiety and so .. yes. ​ Some stutterers will have a differing opinion to all this and I am an open minded person to hear your thoughts and I hope you see some things I said as even somewhat true. Please be respectful :)