Meetings online have become our normal way to meet now and this is showing on the attendees we have been having. On our last meeting we welcomed a new member. At this meeting we had 3 new members!
We spent time introducing ourselves and getting to know our new members. As always, new topics develop as we talk. This time we talked a lot about shame. We agreed that no matter how accepting we are of our stuttering, the feeling of shame never leaves us completely. Sometimes is worse with strangers because we feel pressure to make a good first impression. But other times is worse when we stutter in front of friends and family because we feel we are disappointing our loved ones.
We realized that we don’t have to prove anything to anyone except to ourselves. One person mentioned that he made a lot of progress on his fluency when he realized that he was his only audience. If the talked just focusing on himself as his audience, he could forget everybody else. We don’t usually stutter when we talked to ourselves. So he too pretended that he was talking to himself when talking to others.
We also talked about shaking things up and practicing being uncomfortable. You can create situations that are uncommon as a way to practice to deal with them. That way when something unexpected happens that is beyond your control, you can react to it better.
Lastly, we talked about interviewing for a job and difficult it is now that a lot of the conversations are over the phone or on a video call.
We finished with the closing words. It was great to meet our new members!