Chapter Meeting – Sept 17, 2019

We covered a lot of topics on this meeting.

There is a perception that stressful situations make us stutter. That is true for some people. However, many times is not that the situation is stressful but that is a new situation we haven’t encountered before. This can be a new location, a new person, a new topic or a variation of any of them.

We also talked about “time pressure” but from a different point of view. Many times we talk about how we get pressured to speak fast. But there is also pressure about saying something at a precise moment. The timing of when we say something can be very important before the moment passes. For example, some of members are nurses and they have to communicate important information at the right time or else it can be missed and cause problems for the patient.

Removing the anticipation to stutter and its secondaries can lead the way towards becoming more comfortable. We tend to dread those blocks when we see them coming. How about removing that anticipation and that dread and just focus on the successes? Reminding ourselves of the moments that we are fluent and communicate well leads to less stress and eventually to less blocks.