I’m here today for two reasons: the first is that I feel the only way to be able to respond properly to something is to fully understand it. I want to remove the mystery and discomfort of stuttering. I can appreciate how awkward it can be to stand and wait while someone struggles to say a word. You often wonder what to do, how to respond. I want to make it so that when you meet someone in a store or in the hallway, both the stutterer and the person listening can be comfortable during the conversation. I’m going to share with you some of the basic causes and styles of stuttering along with some of my personal experiences to help you better understand the nature of stuttering because I feel that once you begin to understand something, you no longer fear it.

The second reason I am here today is that one of the things I fear most as a person who stutters is public speaking. It’s terrifying to come up here and speak in front of an audience of my peers and elders who could all judge and laugh or ignore me. I’m here because I want to overcome that fear and prove to myself that I can do anything, no matter how hard it may seem.

We still don't know the cause of stuttering but research indications that its likely a combination of neurological and genetic factors. In trying to manage and cope with stuttering is often fueled by negative feelings that make them nervous or embarrassed. When I first came to Park in 9th grade, I was so terrified about what other people would think about me. Everytime I met someone I feared they were mentally scoring me on a scale of “she’s cool, I’d like to be friends” to “she’s super weird, stay far, far away.” Of course, I imagined myself somewhere near the later. I felt the same trepidation of Harry Potter as he walked up to the sorting hat—what if I was left houseless and friendless in the scary world of high school? This feeling of having to present myself to my peers to make them like me made my stuttering so bad, I was scared to utter a word during orientation. A friendly face would come up to ask me my name and I would struggle—VVIICCTTORIA.

A plain stutter, what we call an ugly noise, is the most embarrassing sound. It’s sounds like this”_____. “ This noise is so embarrassing and off putting that all other stuttering habits revolve around it. In the second column you can see the avoidance behaviors that a person who stutters may do to avoid the ugly noise. I could close my eyes______ or shake my hands________ or silent block_____ . These tricks are crutches that we build up over the years to avoid stuttering. The problem is that a certain trick may be useful for a time, but after a while, the trick stops working and we must pick up another aid to avoid making the ugly noise.

This leads me to my next point, which is stuttering treatment. There are a lot of people who stutter, and thus a lot of treatments and therapies. However, many speech therapists often view stuttering as a problem and as a result they try to “fix you.” However, stuttering is not a problem, it’s a struggle of each person who stutters, but we don’t need “fixing.” A lot of therapists try to fix stuttering by giving someone more avoidance behaviors to get around stuttering, but of course, these don’t help for long and often make someone even more uncomfortable. I had a therapist once who strongly maintained that my stuttering was a huge problem in my life. She felt that I had to fix my stuttering in order to make my life better. And she treated me as such. She brought out all the tricks to teach me to avoid stuttering, telling me to breathe through a stutter like this ___ or to take a deep breath and try again. But telling us that our stutters make us live a lower quality of life, is not helpful to self-esteem and matters just got worse.

Until a few months ago, I had never met another person who stutters and had felt stupid and dumb and did indeed believe that my life was less than a fluent person. Every class was a struggle as I yearned to add my comments but quelled at the feat of taking too long. I met Ben at shul and soon discovered that there were thousands of other people who stutter. My heart soared. The idea that I was not alone in my struggles was both comforting and invigorating. I was soon led to a revolutionary form of stuttering therapy that has changed my life. Its called "Avoidance Reduction Therapy."

ART focused on the crutches that I told you about earlier. In group meetings, we practices telling stories about projects or jobs, focusing on one aspect to improve. One week, I might focus on keeping eye contact while stuttering. We practice in "low fear situations" and eventually, once we have worked down the avoidance behaviors, we get down to open stuttering.

To objective of learning to open stutter fluently is to become comfortable with the sound. When we remove the fear and embarrassment of open stuttering, or making the ugly noise, the fear of judgement goes down and with that, stuttering.

What I believe is one of the most important ideas of avoidance reduction therapy is that the objective is NOT to be fluent. Because fluency is not the most important part of speech. The most important thing is for us to be able to say what we want to say, when we want to say it. I might say "My name is Vvictoria" which may not sound "perfect" to the ear, but is a huge step for people who stutter.

Finally, I know how uncomfortable it can be to wait for someone to finished their sentence but I wanted to give you a few tips of what to do and what not to do when you encounter someone who is struggling. First, I know its extremely tempting but please do not try to finish our sentences, it is embarrassing and often not what we want to say. Second, I've had experiences where people offer me suggestions such as "just breath" or "take your time." Again, I know they are just trying to be helpful but if fixing stuttering was as easy as breathing, no one would stutter. I ask that when we're stuck on a word, please keep eye contact and wait patiently.

Thank you so much for your time and attention during my presentation. I appreciate your support, I have definitely proven to myself that I am capable of conquering my fears and becoming better than them. I hope you take away from this presentation some of the basics of stuttering and I sincerely hope that you are no longer deterred by stuttering. Thank you.