I'm Sara, the founder and director of YouSpeak Stuttering Therapy, a practice dedicated to providing person-centered, individualized therapy for those who stutter of all ages. Through a blend of personal and professional experiences, I hope to help you find your path towards change— a path no longer directed by or defined by stuttering.
As I too am a person who stutters, I understand the pervasive impact stuttering can have on a person’s life firsthand—an impact that can extend far beyond the physical moments and permeate into countless other aspects of life. Not only can stuttering impact our overall sense of self, our outlook on life, the potential to be who we want to be, and to do what we want to do, but it can also affect the everyday tasks that people take for granted—ordering a coffee, reading aloud in class, introducing yourself, or picking up the phone...
![Exploring ARTS® theory and better understanding the deeper drives of things like self-preservation, safety, coping choices, shame, fear, and the power of intentionality all have really shaped how I look at stuttering and the experience in a deeper way…
I think understanding the connection between how we think, feel, and what we do—and how that’s all shaped through the lens of our previous lived experiences (both internal and external) is so important to better understanding the stuttering experience and our response to anticipation in a fuller and [kinder] way.
Re-thinking ‘secondaries’ [can we toss that word?]➡️ simply what we do in response to a moment of stuttering to cope or keep ourselves ‘safe’ in anticipation of [or escape from] shame…they’re really our own self-developed ’techniques’ or ’tools’ [coping choices] when the internal messages say, ‘nope, let’s not show stuttering here…’ or ‘…get out!’
Shifting our thinking, can remove some of the stigma or connotation that ‘secondaries’ are ‘bad.’ ➡️ Think about it more as just an obvious response to our mind-body trying to keep ourselves from experiencing something we’ve sorted as ‘undesirable’ based on our lived experiences. Obviously worth acknowledging how societal’s misunderstandings and ignorances related to stuttering make this a very obvious response.
When we try to just ‘stop doing something’ or ‘reduce a secondary’ without understanding the deeper rooted intentionality or our why, we run the risk of adding additional layers of ‘shame’ for something we may tell ourselves we ‘shouldn’t’ do or should be able to just stop doing without addressing the underlying driving intention [simply, to not stutter or minimize the external visibility of stuttering].
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