commentr/StutterOctober 8, 2014

Content

giving oral presentations is a skill regardless of whether one stutters or not. The best way to learn to manage stuttering while giving oral presentations is to give oral presentations. There is not one method of managing stuttering that is going to work for everyone. but in order to find what is beneficial one must practice. I'm not saying that merely practicing oral presentations will enhance fluency. For some people this is true, for others not so much. But what practice does do is reduce the novelty of the actual presentation. It not only rehearses the content, but it has giving the speaker chances to learn about his/her stutter and what strategies work. Maybe memorization is going to be helpful, maybe using a particular strategy/technique will work, maybe another. Maybe just doing it a couple times will reduce the anxiety in the moment so that OP's cognitive resources aren't in "fight or flight" mode but can be freed up to attend to the content and manner of the presentation. The point is it is impossible to know this without practicing it. Toastmasters is an opportunity to do this. stuttering therapy involves lots of talking regardless of what type of therapy one receives. It's temping to use stuttering frequency as the metric for success. But i'm not so keen on that. I don't think that completely eliminating stuttering is necessary. The reaction to speech is more salient than moment of disfluencies. There is empirical evidence that indicates that attitude matters more than stuttering frequency in achieving "success" from therapy (some of the work I've done says this). So, it's confirming what some of us have known for a long time -- the most salient part of stuttering is not the actual moments of stuttering, but the cognitive response to those moments. You can't learn to manage your cognitive reaction to stuttering without putting yourself in the situation where you're going to have that cognitive reaction to your stuttering.

Themes

Anticipation & AvoidanceCauses & VariabilityEmotional ExperienceIdentity & Disability

Subthemes

Avoidance & SubstitutionOverthinking & MonitoringStress & Fight/FlightAnxiety & Social JudgmentAuthenticity vs. MaskingAcceptance & Pride

Codes (2)

public_speakingemotional_state