commentr/StutterNovember 23, 2024

Content

Hey you sound just like me at your age, I’m 24 (f) now and my stutter doesn’t affect me nearly as much as it did back then! I had speech therapy a few times as a child from ages 6-12, never helped at all but then when i was 21 and at uni i had speech therapy again and it was totally different, was more like normal therapy & focused not on improving my stutter but improving how it impacts my quality of life - i was really avoidant of situations that i stutter in but now I don’t care so much and because I don’t have that same level of anxiefy around those situations my stutter is much better in them. I was the same as you I don’t stutter so much around family and friends but do when reading aloud, making phone calls, getting flustered by strangers etc & that is caused by your brain knowing it’s embarrassing for you in those situations but not around family/friends, so working on the anxiety feelings rather than the actual stutter surprisingly helps so much because if I don’t have as much anxiety around the situation my speech doesn’t get as bad. I think try speech therapy and see how it helps, it surprised me how much it did for me as I didn’t think it would. I think speech therapy for stuttering has changed a bit since I was younger and is now more focused on feelings around speaking rather than fluency techniques which were never helpful for me, could really be worth giving it a try - I didn’t even really notice it improving or realise it was helping me until a while afterwards/other people pointed it out ! Sorry this is so long your post just resonated with me and I never thought speech therapy would help me because of it not helping before but I’m so glad I did it now

Themes

Therapy & ProfessionalEmotional ExperienceAnticipation & Avoidance

Subthemes

Therapy ExperiencesAnxiety & Social JudgmentAvoidance & Substitution

Codes (1)

anticipation