Sweeney’s Stuttering Update – November 2023

Good afternoon everyone,

I hope you’re all having a great start to the week 🙂

As the end of November draws closer with each passing day, 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. Let’s take a look at some of my thoughts regarding my speech over the last couple of weeks.

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

When I was growing up, I always felt the need to warn people in advance that I have a stutter. I would typically start introductions off with “Hi I’m James, and before we go any further, I just wanted to let you know that I have a stutter”, but recently I’ve been thinking, do I need to do that anymore?

Thinking back to when I first started doing it, I suppose it was because I assumed that I would have to give people notice about my speech, in case I ever stuttered at all when chatting to them. You could raise the question here surrounding whether this is something that I felt obligated to do, as a reflexive defence mechanism, or if it is something that I gradually just started doing more and more of over time.

When considering whether this is a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing to do, honestly, there is no ‘one size fits all approach’. I’ve spoken to a number of different people about this over the last couple of years, to try and get a well-rounded perspective of where different people are coming from and it has led me to one clear answer.

When I was on my last weekend trip away to London, back in September this year, I was chatting with my good friend Kam Taj. Kam is a very close friend of mine and is someone whose opinion I value incredibly highly. When I was chatting to him about this, Kam said that there wasn’t a set way to approach this kind of situation, it’s all about what I believe would make me the most comfortable.

If I found that forwarning people about my speech was helpful to myself, other people or indeed both parties, then of course, I am free to carry on doing so. If I found that this preemptive flagging was making me nervous and more inclined to stutter, or if it would lead to people judging me because of a potential stammer, then I certainly wouldn’t need to keep it going.

What I particularly liked about Kam’s point is that he mentioned how my opinion on this topic may change with each passing day, and how that is completely fine. These kinds of thought experiments often do not have one set answer, as the circumstances surrounding them are constantly developing and changing. I suppose the main thing that I have to keep in mind when considering this going forward is – does preemptively warning people about my speech make any difference to the outcome of a situation?

I’ll be honest, this is still an area that I am still processing in my mind but is something that I would be very keen to revisit in the future. I think this ultimately comes down to unravelling the different perspectives regarding how I see my speech, how other people see my speech and how I think that other people see my speech – it’s all a bit of a manic mental mindmap at the moment, but of course, I’ll updater you all as and when I make some new discoveries 🙂

On the whole, I am very happy with how my speech has been over the last couple of weeks – I still do have the occasional bad day or words that I get stuck on, but I am learning how to minimise the frequency of those, while also working on how I bounce back from those more effectively, which seems to be going really well. I’ll share some more updates going forward, bring all of you on the journey to speech fluency with me!

Until next time, that’s all for today’s blog, what do you think? Do you enjoy seeing these monthly stuttering updates? Are there any other topics that you would like to see me take a look at on the page?

Be sure to let me know your thoughts and answers to the above questions, either in the comments below or through our Facebook page!

Thanks for reading & I hope you have a lovely day!