June 23rd, 2015

Post date: Jun 25, 2015 4:33:43 PM

The Eastern Maine NSA Chapter met last nite with 5 people attending, 4 PWS and 1 spouse !  It was great to see Mike and his wife safely returned from Florida.  Chris, Ravi, and I (Marybeth) were also present.

​After catching up with each other, we had several good discussion topics.   We talked about phones !!   Yes... dreaded phones, and discussed strategies that we have used to help ourselves.  All decided that some type of advertising sometimes helps the listener understand that the "silence" they may encounter on the other end of the line​ and to "be patient"....which is what one of us has actually  said to a person on the other end .  This phone discussion led us to the idea that often when we play act a "role", it can often result in increased fluency, as in "acting on a stage", and being "someone else".  Why is that?   Being retired, both Chris and Mike no longer have "jobs"  where they were in roles that required much public speaking...and roles in which they were successful speakers.  Their challenge now is to find other "roles".    Ravi will be defending his dissertation in August  (Yay Ravi !!)...and he is already doing a lot of practicing and being comfortable with standing up and in the "role" of presenter.  We also talked about the differences in stuttering in multilingualism...as Ravi speaks 4 languages !  Finally we talked about  "mindfullness" and asked what that really meant to each of us.  We generally agreed that observing the moment, paying attention to your speech, trying to be objective while stuttering and finding ways to work yourself through it....are all helpful strategies and seem to relate to the concept of mindfulness.

Nobody present at the meeting is going to conference, but one of our members is.  We hope to hear lots of good stuff from the conference at our next meeting!

Great meeting and we hope to see more in July.