Take Control of Your Thoughts with the Happy Stutterer Mindset

Your mindset acts as the lens through which you view yourself and the world, shaping your perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and your experience with stuttering.

Discover the transformative power of your mindset. Paige explores the intricate connection between thoughts, beliefs, and your perception of stuttering. With insightful personal stories and educational content, Paige delves into two mindsets – fixed and growth – and how they impact your journey. Unearth the truth about your thoughts, navigate thinking ruts, and harness the profound influence of self-talk. By the end, you'll be equipped with strategies to unlock lasting change, bolster your self-esteem, and embrace the Happy Stutterer mindset. 

Links

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Recovery from Stuttering Relapse: Coaching solutions with Paige
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Transcript

As I was thinking about what to bring to you this week, I remembered the workshop I presented in 2021 at the Canadian Stuttering Association Conference. So today's episode is about the happy stutterer mindset. We'll get to answer this but for now, want to know one of the most fascinating and interesting things about your mind?

Research says you have approximately 60, 000 thoughts going through your mind every single day. Who knew, right? I'm curious, how many of those thoughts do you think are about stuttering? Like myself, and for a person who stutters, it's not uncommon to think about stuttering all day, every day. I mean, it's hard to get around speaking. It's a part of life. So today, this is what I'll be sharing with you. How your mindset is made up of your thoughts and beliefs, shaping the perceptions you have of yourself and how you make sense of the world. When you take control of your thoughts, you turn the volume down on negative self-talk so that you feel more confident and have greater self-esteem.

You'll also learn about the two types of mindsets, learn what the different traits are between fixed and growth mindsets, learn that changing your thoughts changes your experiences, and learn about the power of words and the importance of positive self-talk. Okay, let's jump in. Okay. Have you ever said the following words and wished to yourself, Ah, if only I didn't stutter, then I would be blank.

What comes up for you when I ask you this question? If only I didn't stutter, then I would be What? If I was to share my answer with you from my younger self, she would say this. If only I didn't stutter, then I would be happy. Maybe you can relate. Maybe this is your exact same answer.

I have to be honest, my younger self never put these two words together, happy and stutter. I mean, it wasn't possible. I felt that as long as I stuttered, I couldn't be happy. And for the longest time, my stutter felt like this huge black cloud hanging over me, weighing me down like a ball and chain. I didn't outgrow my stutter, and so as a young adult, I was determined to finally get rid of it once and for all.

So when I went for intensive speech therapy, the key thing I learned was how to breathe properly for clear and smooth speech. I remember the days were long and exhausting, but I could see the hard work paying off. And I achieved fluency for the very first time in my life. But within months... My fluency started going downhill.

I knew the speech therapy techniques, but I still felt so much fear, anxiety, and shame. So many times I went to use my skills and I felt like my mind and body was being hijacked. Like, can you relate? Has this ever happened to you? At the time, in my diary, I wrote. I can't get control of it anymore. It's controlling me again, and I hate feeling the way that I am right now.

I was so determined before to become fluent once and for all, but it's so difficult. I had good intentions, but maybe that just wasn't enough. As you can see, fluency was short lived. Within a few months, almost all the fluency I'd achieved was completely gone. I felt so much shame, first for stuttering itself, and now for failing at speech therapy.

So what happened? Why did my fluency not last? I believe the clue is in a line from my diary. I had good intentions, but maybe that just wasn't enough. Being gently curious with myself, I wondered, Hmm. Which part just wasn't enough? What was I missing to maintain fluency? This is when I realized that the missing part was this mindset.

Over this episode, we're going to go deeper to learn these five key parts about mindset. the nature of change, how mindset matters.

Okay, let's start off with the nature of change, what it really takes for change. Did you know it's been said that the secret to long lasting change is 80 percent psychology and 20 percent mechanics. What this means is changes in behavior accounts for 20 percent of the effort and is the shifts in mindset.

Thoughts and beliefs that account for the other 80 percent that leads to long term change. Okay, let's break this down. For the part of the 20 percent mechanics, speech therapy is important to provide fluency tools and techniques to people who stutter, and it is a valuable but only part of the equation.

The other 80 percent mindset, this is where In my speech therapy experience, there was a lack of emotional and mental support. Long lasting change requires shifts within a person's mindset, thoughts, and belief system. In my experience, In the short term, effort in changing behavior through speech therapy produced fluency with tools and techniques.

But over the long term, it was the deeply internalized negative thoughts and self-talk that chipped away at my fluency. Key part number two, mindset matters, the difference between success or failure. So what is mindset? Your mindset is made up of your thoughts and beliefs. Beliefs are thoughts you think over and over again.

These thoughts shape how you perceive yourself and make sense of the world. Imagine your mindset is like a pair of glasses that you look through, filtering your perceptions which influences your thoughts and thinking. Why does mindset matter? It's how you process and reprocess the events of your life.

Your mind processes what is happening and shapes your emotional experience in any given moment or situation. The impact of having a strong and positive mindset is key in developing a healthy and high self esteem. It affects daily self-talk as it reinforces our inner beliefs.

attitudes, and feelings about ourselves. There are two different kinds of mindset. One is fixed, and it sounds like this. I can't do it because I stutter. I hate making mistakes. What do you think a fixed mindset like this feels like? When you come from a perspective of thinking with a fixed mindset, it sounds like things feel rigid or being stuck.

You feel trapped. there's no way out, believes that that's just the way things are, and might engage in behavior of avoidance. On the flip side, a growth mindset says, I'm not able to yet, but we'll try again, or challenges help me grow my skills. Let me ask you, what do you think a growth mindset feels like thinking with a growth mindset?

Things feel more flexible and expansive. There's a sense of more freedom. You believe things are possible and you engage in behavior of where you approach situations. Looking back on my experience and the emotional state I was in of relapsing after speech therapy, it was a fixed mindset and judgment on my perceived failure that resulted in my experience of more fear.

anxiety, and shame. In the third part, it's about the truth about thoughts. And here's the three truths that you need to know. At the beginning of this episode, I mentioned you have approximately 60,000 thoughts going through your mind every day. Ask yourself, how often do you think about stuttering in a day?

Is it, do you think 25 percent of the time, 50 percent of the time? Maybe 75 percent of the time, or maybe even all the time, let's do the math. So if you think about stuttering 50 percent of the time during your day, that is about 30, 000 thoughts. That's a lot of thoughts, right? imagine how life would be different if you thought about stuttering less.

How much more energy would that free up? Here is truth number one. There's a common phrase. Don't believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that, thoughts. Just because you have a thought does not mean you need to believe it. It may feel true, but it may not be the truth. Truth number two, change your thoughts and you change your world.

You can change your thoughts as they're not set in stone. You can have a thought and change it. You're not stuck with the ones you have and truth number three, the happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. Now you're not able to control the quantity of thoughts, but you can definitely control the quality of them.

This means you can decide which thoughts you want to keep or or throw away. Why do thoughts matter? It's important to understand the true nature of thoughts. How you think about stuttering and how you see yourself as a person who stutters determines your experience of it. Thoughts really do influence your experience because an event or situation triggers a thought and then that Thought turns into a feeling, and you feel that feeling in your body, then you're going to take action in a behavior.

And this ultimately results in your experience. So to get a different experience, it requires a new thought to change the feeling and the behavior. In my experience that I shared with you earlier, it was my thoughts. Really judgments about my disfluent speech after speech therapy that made me ashamed.

Some of our thoughts are really judgments, and it was my thoughts about being a failure that made me feel like a failure. Part number four. is all about thinking ruts. And here's the three types of thinking that keeps you stuck. So what are thinking ruts? They are patterns of unhelpful thoughts that are engaged in over and over again.

Thinking ruts are negative and keep you feeling stuck. They feed on your fear and anxiety. So the first type is called silver bullet thinking. It's the idea that there must be only one simple and fast solution to a complicated problem. I see this all the time, someone seeking a tip for a quick and easy fix to relieve the pain they're feeling.

On the surface, the problem may seem so simple, but in truth, underneath, it's a complex web of multiple things going on. All adding up to a bigger problem. The danger of this thinking is that it sets up unrealistic expectations. Understand that there can be multiple layers to a problem that is not easily solved or addressed with a fast and one size fits all solution, like you're hoping for a cure or a magic pill.

So, you can take an impatient and frustrated thought like, I was so determined before to become fluent, once and for all, and transform it to, I desire to speak with ease and flow, and I'll allow myself as much time as I need. Thinking threat number two is about black and white thinking. This is also known as all or nothing thinking.

It's a tendency to lump and view something in its extreme opposites. Either it's all good or bad, or all right and wrong. I hear it in the language of some of my clients, where they say phrases such as, always. Nothing, never. To alter this type of extreme thinking, remove rigid judgment so that it allows for things to be in various shades of gray.

So instead of, control is always just out of reach, reframe it to, Control of my speech is within reach. And thinking threat number three is ‘should’ thinking. Behind this type of thinking is a fear of judgment and punishment. It produces feelings of guilt and shame. You hear it in self talk as should, have to, have to.

Or must to replace should thinking the solution is to choose to do things out of choice. This is where there's true power and not from a place of obligation, which is fear. So this sounds like going from so many words I have to say Most of them, I fear. Two, there is nothing to fear in what I want to say.

And the final fifth part is the power of self-talk. What you need to know. Be careful how you are talking to yourself because you are listening. How you speak to yourself really matters. The most important relationship you have is with yourself. It matters whether or not what you are telling yourself is positive and helpful or bringing you down.

Words have energy and they either feel like either a negative or a positive charge. And no words have more power than the ones that you say to yourself. So far today, I've shared with you about the nature of change, how mindset matters. The truth about thoughts showed you some thinking ruts and the power of self-talk. This week, you can ask yourself, are the words I'm saying and the thoughts I'm thinking, is this thought tearing me down and hurting my self-esteem?

Or is this thought lifting me up and increasing my self-confidence? My current self can now put these two words side by side, happy and stutter, because now me and my happiness is much bigger, much bigger than my stutter. So wherever you are on your journey, know that you can accept yourself as a person who stutters and at the same time, a person who is also taking steps towards speaking with greater flow.

The mindset of a happy stutterer is this. Someone who accepts who they are in the present moment, stays open to a growth-oriented mindset, they extend compassion to themselves, speaks to themselves with kindness and support, and bravely faces their fears with courage. I hope you've enjoyed this episode.

Take care until next time. If you have any thoughts about this episode, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me, Paige, at thehappystutterer.com.