March 31st, 2016

Post date: Apr 28, 2016 6:14:18 PM

Happy Spring!!   The attendance at tonight's NSA meeting was small but the interest and passion for things stuttering was high!  Chris and I were the PWS attendees at Dysart's Restaurant tonight, and that was it!  We kept waiting for you all to show up!!   But, we had lots to talk about.  It was good to catch up on our activities over the past three months.  Topics about stuttering were many! Chris has been doing some volunteer work for a friend running for political office which involves many phone calls.  This experience has been good, and he's been able to note his automatic tension response to being on the phone, in spite of being able to now stand back and understand it and watch it...and wondering how to change that!   Big question we all ask...isn't it?   We discussed how hard wired and "automatic" our tension responses can to be anticipated stuttering.  Changing ways of thinking about a situation /event and also re-writing your own story have been helpful for both of us.   For me, it has been about moving away from the fear of people's reactions to stuttering, and realizing it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.   We both agreed that changing how you think "in the moment of the stutter" is awfully hard and takes much much time.  A good place to start is "after the stuttering", in those bad down moments when we re-live a bad speech moment and too easily spiral downward in negative thinking.   

So...that is a small snapshot of our discussion for the night.  We also talked about the NSA conference and wished it wasn't always July 4th week....a tough time to leave Maine!   We were both hopeful that maybe in the future NSA will hold a mini conference in the New England area some other time of the year!

Next meetings!!   Heads up ALL!!   Our April meeting will be at University  of Maine, speaking to the grad students in the Fluency Disorders class taught by Nancy Hall.   It will be 4:00 - 6:30, Tuesday April 26th.   Details of location to follow soon, but put it on your calendars... I know those of you working "real jobs"...may not be able to get free for that time slot, but I know enough of us will show up to have a good panel for the class.