Resides as a driving force
Pushed by their requests
This simple question is really a multitude of queries all rolled into one. Do I care enough about my stutter to spend the time and effort on therapy? Do the struggles I have with producing speech negatively affect my life enough to spend the time and effort? Do I honestly believe that any type of therapy will produce an outcome that is improved enough from how my speech currently is to allow me to be happy with it? If I believe that, do I honestly believe that I possess the gumption and motivation to do the type of therapy I’ll need to do to achieve that end? Yeah, these questions ain’t all gettin’ answered tonight.
Stuttering certainly does negatively affect my life. It causes me extreme frustrations at times. It makes me think about and notice my speech every time I talk. I dwell on it prior to, during, and after speaking. I feel good when I don’t struggle and not so good when I do (“not so good” can vary from “not a big deal” to “super duper shitty”, depending on who I’m talking to, what the situation is, how bad my tension is, etc). That being said - Has my speech problem held me back in life? In the grand scheme of things, no, I don’t think so, but on the small scale it has because there are times I don’t say everything I want to say or cut myself short because it’s easier than fighting. Well, I think that sort of answers one of the questions.
The bottom line right now is this: I like going to my speech therapy. I’m not always sure that what I’m doing is going to have any positive, long term effects, but I’m not sure that it won’t, so I’m fine with it.