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My Limitations I have often been described as someone rather mysterious. Curious, observant, hard to figure out, etc. But the truth is, I have hidden myself from others out of shame and disconnection within myself. A deeply personal and significant aspect of myself that has molded me into who I am is my stuttering. Although my stuttering is now mild or barely noticeable, the lingering effects of how I have coped with stuttering still affects my life. It has shaped the ways I communicate and express myself to this day. Although I can’t pinpoint what happens neurologically, the obstacle I interact with on a daily basis is actually pushing the sounds out of my mouth smoothly, without interruption. The words start to halt when I get excited, anxious, in public, and when I read out loud. I feel as if my mouth is temporarily paralyzed and I am trying to revive my mouth to form the words I want to say. Before I start to share my relationship with my stuttering, I want to discuss it generally. There are many complex factors -emotional, physical, and cognitive mechanisms intricated and they all have to align evenly for fluent speaking to manifest. The disfluency of speech is stuttering or stammering. The depiction of stuttering is being stuck on repeating certain sounds, syllables, or words. It’s the psychical sensation of stumbling over or resisting what we are trying to say. What causes the crumbling of someone’s words? Why do we do this and how does it affect the people who suffer from it? There are two types of stuttering: Developmental and Neurogenic. Neurogenic Stuttering is the speech fluency being obstructed in the context of psychical and/or mental damage. Neurogenic stuttering is caused by traumatic brain injuries such as having a stroke, diseases, or deteriorating developmental tissues. This form of stuttering is less common than Developmental Stuttering. Developmental Stuttering is the most common type of stuttering. About ten percent of children stutter between the ages 2-7, are learning how to speak. Roughly, 75% percent of those children outgrow it. The remaining 25% continue this into their adulthood. When a child learns to communicate their thoughts, needs, and wishes freely, they attain comfortability in expressing themselves, creating emotional connections, having a sense of freedom, independence, confidence, and a secure self esteem. Children that are listened to feel respected and that their expressions are valid. Children who grow up being humiliated or mocked for stuttering can develop adversity expressing their desires, boundaries, or who they are. Stuttering materializes when children have the need to express themselves but their ability to communicate has not been able to fully develop. When anxiety, large amounts of dopamine, stress, or fear is present, the stuttering or the collapsing of words happen frequently. Anxiety and stuttering unite, and feed each other, as a loop. This causes a slippery slope of speech fluency. In this world, verbal communication is the primordial, basic way to connect and express yourself with others. Stuttering makes this difficult and it can trigger anxiety, powerlessness, and humiliation- particularly when it comes to trying to make connections with people. Stuttering can be exacerbated in stressful situations such as trying to speak in public or social interactions. Negative experiences or interactions that are induced by stuttering can influence someone to stutter worse, be more frustrated, depressed, lonely, overwhelmed, etc. This can cause low self esteem, it can prevent or damage relationships, get in the way of professional & personal goals, undermine their performance in their daily lives, etc. **-----------** The mechanics of putting executing my words has always been rather uncomfortable. To communicate is to make connection. When I felt my words were taken away from me, I felt I had lived behind a glass wall. As a child, I described my stuttering as my words being stuck in a spider web and struggling for dear life to break free. I frequently had outbursts of frustration that vividly portrayed my emotions. My stuttering has most likely manifested from speech punishment, anxiety, and low self esteem as a child. In school, I was branded as the Haole girl who stuttered. Other children found my glitches of speech amusing. Because I was often mocked for how I tried to communicate with others, I grew up believing my voice was invalid or something to ridicule. The disappointment from my mother and her heated frustration often paralyzed me to find the interest to voice myself. This has lead me to second guess myself on a daily basis in my adulthood. I would get paralyzed in how I wanted to express myself because I had always felt like it was never sufficient. I felt ashamed and guilty as people got impatient watching me trying to accomplish words. I still have phantom sensations of the burning humiliation when I choked on words, trying to fight tears, trying to resuscitate the words I wanted say. I stopped making eye contact with people after seeing (or sensing) their pity when they tried to watch me speak. I had lost interest in trying to engage with people (and with myself) because I thought I wasn’t capable of fully connecting with anyone else. When I felt humiliated, hurt, invalid, and frustrated, I found alternative ways to release my emotions but in unhealthy ways. The feeling of ugliness I had felt from stuttering encouraged my desire to escape. The powerlessness and disconnection I lived in was heavy as a child. I felt as if my emotions were building up and as if I were drowning in emotions I couldn’t release. The constant resistance I had advanced my wariness in settings requiring a demanding amount of mental effort anticipating and attempting to avoid stuttering. So, I just gave up trying to connect with a world I felt I foreign to. Over time, I realized that I felt less alone when I removed myself psychically, emotionally, and mentally from everyone around me. This is how my avoidance behavior and disconnection with others (and myself) developed. As I slowly drifted apart from myself, I often fantasized heavily of escaping, disappearing, running away, developing addictions and obsessions, and even suicide. It was easier to be invisible than to see myself as disinvited in the world around me. However, my limitations have had some benefits. Stuttering and having a desire to connect with something pushed me to find alternative ways to express myself and find something tangible in this world such as playing piano, learning in depth about music history and theory, reading literature, and watching movies. This was my way to escape and to express myself the only way I knew how. I couldn’t love my own words so I fell in love with literature pieces from Dostoyevsky, Sartre, Pessoa, Proust, Bataille, etc. I lived vicariously from reading the obscure words written by philosphers, they inspired me to analyze and find ways to express myself through the words I longed to speak. In libraries, I searched, spent hours, hovering over poignantly legendary sentences looking for anything, or everything, that resonated with me. In hopes that I could know I wasn’t alone in the emotions I felt trapped in. That my feelings existed in other people, who were long gone but loved by the world in how they shared their sentiments. I pushed myself to expand my vocabulary to not fixate on one word to save a sentence. My relationship and passion for classical music expanded, my creativity thrived in relation to composing music, I felt inspired to describe the indescribable. However, not all of my decisions on how I handled my loneliness were healthy. The pragmatic ways that I have coped with my aloofness in my past involved arrangements of substances, lucid dreaming, obsessing over my appearance as a distraction, - I had basically lived in my own world. My loneliness and solitude couldn’t be deciphered and it made it harder for me to be present in my own life. **- - - - - - - - - - - - - -** Although anxiety or depression is not the direct cause of stuttering, it can intensify stuttering. Neuroimaging research has shown that people with Social Anxiety Disorder and people who stutter process dopamine differently due to the D2 receptors. The amygdala has been proven to influence stuttering in SAD. My relationship with years of substance abuse and anti depressants has stunted my speech fluency in my adulthood, to this day. But how am I moving forward? Generally, substances and even caffeine can make your speech more apprehensive. If you look at the trajectory of my life, I could be pragmatically speaking if I advocate for psychedelics. Based on my personal experience and anecdotal reports, I want to shed some light on how using psychedelics have helped. Psychedelics are a delicate subject. Although they have created new avenues of insight, they are not the answer to my problems and is not for everyone. I have written about my relationship with psychedelics and my stuttering in this regard to see if my impression resonates with anyone and to share how it supports my experiences. Speaking, to me, is like moving against water. I am overly conscious of my words and how I wield them because my mouth constantly resists them. Under the influence of psychedelics, my mind is at ease, my thoughts are luminous and coherent, and I am able to speak smoothly. There is no resistance and I am able to embody fluidity in my speech. I feel at peace with myself. Psychedelics has motivated me to resurface from a semi conscious state that I made a home in. I believed that psychedelics have aided my deeper investigation of my etiology of my stuttering, my lack of presence in myself, and ignited inspiration to heal myself. **- - - - - - - - - - - -** Becoming a sex worker has challenged me to communicate with myself and others in intimate and vulnerable ways. I am learning how to be confident of declaring who I am, what I want, and how I resonate with others. My inner dialogue has changed significantly and it shown me how to have a better relationship with myself. My journey of self exploration and acceptance as a dominatrix is not tolerating, but finding appreciation and compassion in who I am and my past. Pushing myself to be vulnerable is helping me overcome my fear of feeling ashamed or unworthy. Continuing to put myself out there helps me become desensitized to fear of rejection or judgement at an optimal level. Therapy and introspection have been a positive force in that regard. My stuttering, self disdain, hardships, vulnerability, healing process- they have offered me such an incredible and valuable awareness of who I am and how I want to move forward with my life. They have inspired self-knowledge, self forgiveness, and self-compassion in a way that reconnects me with reality. I no longer rely on my fluidity of speech to elocute who I am. I feel incredibly lucky that I have the beautiful people in my life to inspire and motivate me to still be here, emotionally, mentally, and psychically. Overcoming my limitations with the people I love inspired me how to flourish my expressions and how to share them. I am finding new ways to approach and engage with people. I am inspired to discover the complexities of ourselves. I am actively learning that my limitations has shown me that I can explore multiple expressions of linguistics. I am growing into a deep understanding of what it means to be myself, with others.