I have now lived in Los Angeles for a total of almost 7 months, it still doesn't feel very much like home to me. I am struggling to find friends, I am struggling to find a community that I connect with, and I am struggling to not lose myself. I have a constant worry in the back of my mind whenever I go go out. Fear has been more prevalent in these last few months than it ever has in my life before. This is a new feeling, and all I want to do is recapture my old self again.
I booked a flight to New York for that exact reason, to recapture myself, whatever parts of me I knew and loved are still there and I'm trying to find her desperately, whether I spend my time roaming the streets, hanging out with friends, or just walking in and out of bodegas, I need a new environment. Some place that will help me step out of where I am now. I've never been so unhappy and Im unsure of how to pull myself out of this funk. Im hoping that New York will ground me in ways I haven't been able to be grounded here in LA. It's crazy because some people wish to leave New York with such vigor, and I wish everyday to go back. I just can't step out of this depression that I'm in. I don't feel safe while in it, I don't feel like I value myself and I don't feel valued by other people, I have to find myself all over again, and that is partly what I'm hoping this trip with give me. There is a chance that I will leave unfulfilled, which is a frightful prospect but it will also let me know that my journey to my self, isn't based in some city or friends, but within myself...which lets be honest, I already knew that, I just want to get out of LA. It represents nothing good for me. Nothing
I've begun doing speech therapy weekly with Heather my speech pathologist in New York via Skype. She is always a nice reminder of the life I had before moving here. Of course we are focusing as always on Cognitive reshaping, but also delving a bit more into physical changes with my speech. So not only focusing on changing my thinking patterns where it pertains to my speech but also changing how I physically deal with tension in the moments of stuttering. To work on my cognitive restructuring, I have begun making a list of positive thoughts to replace the negative thoughts that I often have when stuttering.
During moments of stuttering, specially with people I do not know, my mind often goes to place like..."You sound so stupid, who is going to trust you when you can barely get your words out" I can then replace that thought with the thought "Stuttering and my intelligence do not correlate with each other" Now although my negative stuttering thought seems infinitely more personal and plain mean and my positive thought feels a bit more generic, I am assuming its a start.
"Does it matter much, what this person thinks about my intelligence?"
"He isn't hiring me or paying my bills" This comment then gives people who do have the job of hiring me a little more power than I would like for them to have, but, baby steps I'm guessing. One of the most important things i have to remember is "My time is just as important. If I take a couple od extra seconds, so be it" This is difficult because I am super aware of time, always have been, and I'm most aware of time when I am speaking, always trying not to waste another persons time, because that is what I think stuttering is. A time waster, and I, deep down inside myself am not a time waster, I value time.
A few tactics to fight these negative thoughts, I will be trying. One is to stutter so severely to make my listener walk away. Giving myself this experience will desensitize me the perceived feeling it will give me, and force me to actually experience this. Another one is to always stutter on the first word I say, this gets the fact that I stutter out there, so there isn't any hiding from that point on.
These are few of the exercises that I will try this week. To be honest, I am not motivated to do any of it. Ive lost all motivation over the past few months. Im always exhausted, nothing seems to be going right, but I will try, because there is a little part of me left, that still has to try. Im just hoping that doesn't get stomped out in the process.
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