Chapter Meeting – Mar 15, 2016

We were 9 people at this meeting, including two students from the Undergraduate program.

We watched the short movie “Stutterer” which was recently awarded with the Best Short Action Film Oscar.  The movie was only 13 minutes long but we spent the rest of the meeting talking about different topics that we could relate to from the movie such as:

  • Missed opportunities: things we don’t say or activities in which we don’t participate because we are afraid of stuttering
  • Relying on others: sometimes we ask others to make phone calls for us, tell a joke we know we can’t deliver, or just say the things we find difficult to say.  Although these are things that even non-PWS people would ask others to do for them occasionally, for us it creates feelings of shame and inadequacy.
  • Self-deprecation: we are our worst enemy.  We put ourselves down thinking that everybody else is better just because they are fluent and can communicate better than us
  • Online communication: Technology and social media have made it a lot easier for stutterers to communicate with others.  However, it also makes it easier for us to avoid disclosing to others and face our own fears about what others think.
  • Disclosure:  Why don’t we disclose when we know it would be easier in the long run?  Do we think we can get away with it?  It is easier for some but very difficult for others.  Where do you stand on disclosure?

Looking forward to another spirited meeting.  Come join us next time!

Chapter Meeting – Mar 3, 2016

We were four people at this meeting.

We spent some time talking about volunteering stuttering and several techniques to do it. Not all of us do it and we were curious about how the others do.

This evolved into talking about “covered practice”, meaning, are there any situations for which you rehearse ahead of time?  Some of us do it for some situations such as practicing a speech or a presentation you are going to give in front of a lot of people.  It helps because we don’t have to worry about what we are saying and there is one less thing to worry about when we are trying to focus on reducing anxiety and being more fluent.  However, this is completely the opposite for others.  Sometimes, rehearsing is counter productive; we are more fluent when we are more spontaneous and don’t have to remember the words that we rehearsed.

This meeting took place the week after the Oscar’s were announced and the movie “Stutterer” was awarded Best Live Action Short Film. We decided to stream it and watched it right there on my iPad.  We had a nice discussion about it and we came up with topics to discuss at our next meeting.  We plan to show the movie on the big screen at the next La Salle meeting.  Please join us if you can!