A Healthy Discussion – Goa SHG – 28th March 2010

R and I met today at 10 am at our usual meeting venue (Nehru Park). Since it was only two of us, we couldn’t do any exercise as such. So we decided to have a “brain-storming” discussion about stammering- experiences good and bad, exercises and some problems issues related to it.

We also decided that while talking, we would use bouncing and / or prolongation technique as we would talk. As the discussions started, sometimes we forgot to implement the technique, but the discussion was turning out to be a good one.

R first shared an experience in college that bothered him last week. He requested his friend to answer the roll-call for him in anticipation of a block. But then it bothered him the rest of the week that he shouldn’t have done this. I told him that he should avoid doing this next time. I also told him about what Keith Boss said in Pune, about “Avoiding Avoidance”. This was a case of avoidance, and Keith stressed very much on avoiding such situations.

We then talked about many techniques. R asked me about the therapies. I told him about all the therapies which I had attended right from my childhood, and how it’s futility had an impact on my mind that “Speech Therapy was of no help with regards to Stammering”.

R also raised a point about Stammering in interviews. He was of the opinion that interviewers may give lesser points or even reject a candidate because he stammered. I further added that there are also few interviewers who give more importance to the content then how it is said. I also told him about my discussion with Sachin Sir about the significance of Communication Skills. We should rather focus on Communication Skills rather then curing or getting rid of our stammering. We both agreed on this point and decided to find more about communication skills and share with each other in the next meet.

Further, we discussed much more about TISA workshops, meeting Keith Boss till we finally realized that it was afternoon. We then decided to wind up, satisfied with the long and fruitful discussion we had. Even though we could not maintain talking in bouncing throughout, just talking freely with no fear of stammering, helped a lot!