We made it! The end of the year is here and we are so grateful to be able to spend another year together. In case you missed our December Chapter meeting last night, here’s a quick recap of what happened.

With 14 people in attendance, including one first timer (Hi, Diana!) we met at the Schimelpfenig (try saying that 3 times without stuttering!) Library in Plano, ready to have a great time.

Dallas’ very own, Priyanka Parikh, volunteered to facilitate our meeting for the first time, and started with the very appropriate question: “What are your resolutions for 2018?”. The biggest surprise was that almost no one in our group has the habit of making resolutions, but everybody found something they would want to try/work on. Some of the responses were about adopting healthier habits like sleeping better (Priyanka), learning new ways to relax (Sarah) and “maybe go to the dentist” (Jacob). Other ideas included self-improvement goals like joining Toastmasters (Diana), getting better at time management (Josh), and stop using Facebook so much (Russ).  We wish you all the best of luck with your efforts!

With that, we moved on to our topic of the evening, which was: “How do you cope with your stuttering during a stressful season?”.

With so many parties and reunions happening this holiday season, we know that there might be an increase in speaking anxiety for some of us, so we asked everybody…. how do you cope with the added stress?

We found out that everybody deals with stuttering in their own way, and the “right” technique depends on what your specific goal is. If “fluency” is your goal, many of us talked about specific speaking techniques like easy onsets, breathing deeply, and stretching sounds.

On the other hand, some people took a different approach, and talked not so much about speaking itself, but about mindset and emotion management during stuttering, saying that “if you are okay with stuttering, you stutter less”. This highlighted what many of us already know: many of the things we “endure” during stuttering happen only in our heads, and taking control of that can be the beginning of a new approach to speaking.

That was a great way to end our meeting. Thank you all for being part of this amazing chapter! 2017 was a fantastic year for us, and the stuttering community, and we cannot wait for what 2018 will bring us.

Cheers, see you next year!

Dallas NSA