http://StutteringForum.com/forums/ stuttering, stammering, stutter, stammer en Sat, 18 May 2013 21:59:21 GMT vBulletin 60 http://stutteringforum.com/forums/images/misc/rss.jpg http://StutteringForum.com/forums/ http://StutteringForum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9074&goto=newpost Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:20:17 GMT Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum and found out about it through a friend of mine. I've read alot of the posts and comments on the forum and found them to have a lot of great insight.

I've been stuttering ever since I can remember (probably started around age 3 or 4 like most people). I'd classify my stutter as mild to moderate. I'm incredibly fluent sometimes but can also be pretty disfluent ,specifically in high pressure situations like talking to superiors or dealing with direct questions(questions you can't use avoidance behaviors for).

Despite my speech, I've been a pretty social person. elementary school and through high school i played sports, went to youth group and had a pretty solid group of friends. My speech was still very frustrating but didn't seem to hinder me TOO much.

Now I'm in college and I'm a junior at mizzou (if my screen name didn't give it away), studying marketing. I participate in many speaking situations including being involved in a social and a business fraternity as well as working as a teller at a credit union and have a girlfriend who I've been dating for several months now.

Although I'm involved in all these organizations and have a great family, friends, and girlfriend, I still sometimes feel an emptiness inside. In general I'm pretty quiet and pretty even keel but my speech as for many stutterers prevents me from sharing my opinion. Or when I do speak, people don't take me seriously or don't understand what I mean when explaining something. I often talk in a circle and use substitutions (something I've been working on in therapy but is very hard for me to stop using avoidances). I feel like I expend so much effort in to every day. I feel exhausted having to carefully think and phrase what I'm going to say to be a "socially acceptable" way of speaking. Also, I sometimes fail to convey the right emotions because I focus on simply getting the words out and not connecting the necessary emotions or expressions.

Recently I've received the "Are you sure?" phrase when introducing myself and "Don't be nervous" comment on a graded group presentation I did in one of my marketing classes. Some of these comments are simply a lack of understanding of stuttering from the general public, but when I hear something like that regularly or get a weird look, it gets to me. Even more frustrating has been interviews for internships. My interviewing skills and speech during interviews are astronomically better now than they were a year ago, although i still use some substitutes during them. But despite this I have still been denied to 4 different internships for the summer. I've done adequate research on the companies and been professional throughout and have only had a handful of disfluencies. Sometimes I just wonder what I have to do. I work my tail off and things just haven't worked out.

I also live in a fraternity house which is fun, but at the same time creates high pressure and a fast paced environment for me which can be stressful at times and clearly lacks the privacy I need when I'm frustrated with my speech.

How does/did everybody else deal with their stuttering in college? I'd love to hear any advice or anybody elses opinion about it.

Thanks,
Jeff ]]> Stuttering Forum jwmizzou http://StutteringForum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9074