When people think about stuttering, what they usually think about is the sounds that I make, but those behaviors don't necessarily capture the experience that someone who stutters has. Openly stuttering is much more enjoyable. I know there's things that I could do to change the way that I talk, but I'm choosing not to because it's a lot of work.
and I want to enjoy the communication that I'm having. I started to stutter when I was about eight. I didn't really know what it was and I didn't know what was going on.
The goal when I was younger in speech therapy was really about hiding. You're stuttering, this is bad, we should show you tools so that you can prevent this. I decided that speech Pathology was an area that I wanted to go into because I was so disappointed about the kind of work that was being done and what we knew. Really, I wanted to save young children from the crappy therapy that I had as a kid. The research that I'm working on really tries to answer the question of what the heck is stuttering anyway, right?
Really, if we want to understand... the underlying mechanisms, we should decide what is this thing we're calling stuttering. The research that I am currently doing is to better understand how and why the fears and anxieties that people who stutter might have and how we can help reduce some of those fears.
The questions that I hear the most are asking what the listener can do and it's really just the way you listen to anybody else trying to maintain eye contact in a natural way not trying to guess what the person's good going to say it's really just Listening like you would do for anybody else one of the coolest things about Being a person who stutters is connecting with other people who's who stutter. There's a a shared sense of community within that. We'd love to meet other people who stutter as well and strengthen the stuttering community that is here. Don't be afraid to reach out.