Sweeney’s Stuttering Update – July 2023

Good afternoon everyone,

I hope that you’re all keeping well 🙂

The end of July is coming quickly before us, and you know what that means, it’s time for this month’s Sweeney’s Stuttering Update! I like to do these updates as a monthly log of my journey to speech fluency, bringing you along on the ride with me! So, let’s see how my stutter has been throughout July!

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

2023 so far has been an incredible year when it comes to my stutter and my overall speech fluency, with my speech feeling more fluent than it has done in a very long time. I’ll be honest, there have been a lot of bumps in the road and there have been times when I have struggled to maintain solid control, but on the whole, I feel like I have done a fantastic job of it all so far.

However, I have found that there is something that I have been relying on a lot, not just over the course of this year, but throughout my entire life when it comes to managing my speech, and that is the use of buffer or filler words. It’s something that everybody does occasionally, but I feel like I have always used it a lot more, whether consciously or unconsciously, as a way to help me build my confidence in my speech.

What do I mean by the use of buffer words?

When I am speaking, I can usually anticipate that I am going to stutter on an upcoming word, and to bypass this, I add a safety word such as “real” or “actual” into my sentence, to ensure that I speak fluently. For example, instead of saying “I was speaking to one of my friends about this last week”, I might instead say “I was speaking to my actual friends about this last week”.

It’s almost as if in my mind, I use these words as a safety net and use them where I feel like I am going to stutter, as a way around it all. While this isn’t directly a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ thing, I’m going to spend a little time over the next couple of weeks thinking about how I can slowly start to reduce my usage of these buffer words, as I feel like it can massively help me when articulating whatever I want to say in a clear and concise manner.

I don’t have any immediate thoughts as to how I am going to set about correcting this, but I’m sure that some ideas will come to mind over the next couple of days/weeks. As always, I’ll be sure to share any updates and thoughts that I have about this with you along the way!

On the whole, things are really going well with my speech, which is lovely to see. If I can start allocating the time to iron out all of the smaller technicalities and changes, that shows that I have made some significant progress in recent times, and this is something that I can be really proud of. My journey to speech fluency has been a strange old ride so far, and while there is still progress left to be made, everything is starting to come together and go to plan, and let’s be honest, I can’t really ask for more than that.

That’s all for today’s blog, what do you think? Do you enjoy seeing these monthly stuttering updates? Are there any topics or ideas that you would like to see me explore on the page in the future?

Be sure to let me know your thoughts and answers to the above questions!

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely weekend!