How I've been...

 So, its a been a little while since I’ve written anything and I just wanted to share where I've been and how I've been. 

I have been kept very busy as of late, mostly with work but also just with getting on with life. It has sort of felt like I’ve been trying to keep my head above water for the last few weeks. Resting has been a priority and something that I have been trying to take seriously because my energy levels have been low most days and because of that I've been stuttering a little more than usual, which has also been tiring.

I'm assuming that I'm not the only person who stutters who finds that stuttering a lot can be taxing, both on mental and physical health, even if you are the most 'fluid' stutterer. Unfortunately, I have had a couple of stuttering moments with strangers that have been hard to deal with. Throughout my life, I have been lucky enough to have few and far between moments where strangers are disrespectful when I stutter and maybe that's why when I do have these moments, they stay with me for longer and they can get me down. It kind of feels like a kick in the teeth when I have struggled with the phone or with ordering a coffee and I decide to do the scary thing, that the people who I meet in these situations can so easily remind me why I have anxiety around these things. It’s almost as if I am being punished because I force myself to take a risk which is really challenging to deal with. 

Taken in Amsterdam

These moments can start a snowball effect where I begin to judge myself against my fluent peers and start to panic that I won’t be able to live a full life because of my stutter. I have a tendency to catastrophize, even on things that don’t involve stuttering but I am currently in therapy and that has been helping a lot. And while, most of the time, I have been able to rationalize these moments into fleeting moments, they can still get me down. I have always believed in the philosophy of ‘Feeling your feelings’ without attaching to them and I find that it actually helps to tell myself that sometimes life can be s--t because without the rain you wouldn’t appreciate the sun. 

So, while I have been struggling a little more with my stutter and all that comes with having a stutter, I have also been trying to focus on not attaching to these moments of stuttering. They are simply moments in a 24 hour day and they are usually over within a matter of minutes and they do not deserve to live rent free in my head. 

Taken at the Beach

I don’t like ending on a negative note, so here’s a quote which will hopefully make you see the good side of tough challenges…

‘Falling down is part of life, getting back up is living and standing up tall is the first step forward’