Breadfish
12-05-2008, 08:58 PM
Hi, I'm a 20 year old mild stutterer from New Zealand.
I'm a mild stutterer and by that I mean, if I want to, I can have a fluency of almost 100percent but it involves only speaking at particular times. Usually when I sense that I'm gonig to stutter I just dont talk at all, and I might start speaking 2 or 3 seconds later when it's gone. Most of the time when I've begun a sentence I usually won't stutter. The thing with this is that most of the time I don't say what I want to say, ie, I may have wanted to say something during a period when I knew I was going to stutter but I opt not to, for fear of stuttering, and when the time has come that I know I can begin a sentence with full fluency, the moment to say what I wanted to say in the conversation has passed. When I make the effort to disregard this, and start speaking whenever I want to despite having the feeling that I'm in a period of time where if I try to start speaking I'll stutter, I stutter pretty violently.
So I can hide it pretty well. If I want to I can maintain pretty much 100percent fluency by choosing to speak only at certain times. This makes me seem a lot more quiet and reserved than I actually am, and it pretty much makes me sick. And, unsurprisingly I have huge amounts of anxiety from all of this avoidance. It involves hiding a huge portion of my actual personality; people usually perceive that I'm a perfectly fluent speaker, yet I'm utterly controlled by the stutter in what I say, and when I say it.
Recently I've been trying to change my mindset, and saying whatever I want whenever I feel like saying it, regardless of the stutter, for this is obviously the first step to overcoming it to some degree, and no longer being controlled by it. Because I could carry on living the way I'm living, and stuttering very little, but being only a shadow of the me I want to be.
Whenever I do stutter infront of a stranger, and carry on with the conversation like it's nothing at all to be concerned about, it is a HUGE RELIEF, though this has only come about recently. In previous years when I stuttered infront of a stranger, I'd pretty much just recede back into embarrased silence and try and pretend that it didn't actually happen.
Anyway, that's probably a pretty long introduction. I look forward to hearing some of your experiences, and sharing some of mine.
Btw if you're wondering about the name, type 'marvellous breadfish weebl' into google; it's pretty funny in an utterly pointless sort of way.
I'm a mild stutterer and by that I mean, if I want to, I can have a fluency of almost 100percent but it involves only speaking at particular times. Usually when I sense that I'm gonig to stutter I just dont talk at all, and I might start speaking 2 or 3 seconds later when it's gone. Most of the time when I've begun a sentence I usually won't stutter. The thing with this is that most of the time I don't say what I want to say, ie, I may have wanted to say something during a period when I knew I was going to stutter but I opt not to, for fear of stuttering, and when the time has come that I know I can begin a sentence with full fluency, the moment to say what I wanted to say in the conversation has passed. When I make the effort to disregard this, and start speaking whenever I want to despite having the feeling that I'm in a period of time where if I try to start speaking I'll stutter, I stutter pretty violently.
So I can hide it pretty well. If I want to I can maintain pretty much 100percent fluency by choosing to speak only at certain times. This makes me seem a lot more quiet and reserved than I actually am, and it pretty much makes me sick. And, unsurprisingly I have huge amounts of anxiety from all of this avoidance. It involves hiding a huge portion of my actual personality; people usually perceive that I'm a perfectly fluent speaker, yet I'm utterly controlled by the stutter in what I say, and when I say it.
Recently I've been trying to change my mindset, and saying whatever I want whenever I feel like saying it, regardless of the stutter, for this is obviously the first step to overcoming it to some degree, and no longer being controlled by it. Because I could carry on living the way I'm living, and stuttering very little, but being only a shadow of the me I want to be.
Whenever I do stutter infront of a stranger, and carry on with the conversation like it's nothing at all to be concerned about, it is a HUGE RELIEF, though this has only come about recently. In previous years when I stuttered infront of a stranger, I'd pretty much just recede back into embarrased silence and try and pretend that it didn't actually happen.
Anyway, that's probably a pretty long introduction. I look forward to hearing some of your experiences, and sharing some of mine.
Btw if you're wondering about the name, type 'marvellous breadfish weebl' into google; it's pretty funny in an utterly pointless sort of way.