🌎 StutterFest 2024- Michael O'Shea: The Stuttering Volcano

[Music] next speaker is Michael oay from Ireland and had the pleasure of spending a few days with him last fall he he he walks the talk he really does this is a this is a great guy with a lot of great information Michael please take it away thank you home welcome everybody what we're going to talk about today is you and you're going to see a lot of yourself in what we're going to talk about okay the stuttering volcano it's called and if I can just bring down this and share it up of this I'm sorry this now so anybody any idea how we get rid of the black bar that's covering the share screen at the top okay we working off the side screen presentation today is about you it's about how you're stuttering erupts and what we need to pay attention to so a bit about myself I started to stutter at the age of four I got a severe beating off a none in school I didn't speak for three months so when I spoke again I stuttered that was compounded three years later by uh severe beating off a principal of the school I was in his class because my teacher was in out for three days and he asked me a question one day and I couldn't open my mouth and he lost his temper and he he went to hit me across the hand with a stick with a brass feral on the end of it and I pulled my hand back and he lost his temper even more the next time he hit me he drew blood from my hand I got over a week off school because my hand swelled up he was reported to the doctor and he was reported to the school councel and I don't know what happened after that as Fair as we know he lost his job but anyway that's passed so that was the reason the reason I spent serious time and serious money ever since the time I left school at 17 I didn't go to university because of my stutter I didn't take up a scholarship for sports scholarship to Villanova University at 17 because I stuttered how would I so survive in America on my own when I couldn't survive at home with my family and the support I had there on my own so I made sure that that wouldn't happen I got married I built my own home at 22 I started my own business at 22 as well and at the age of 35 my grandmother passed and I could not say goodbye to her at her funeral the way I wanted to it had a huge huge emotional impact on me and it caused me a lot of pain and that was that the reason that was the reason people asked me why I went to work on my speech at 44 and that was the reason pain there was no other reason that pain I didn't want to experience it again because nature taking its course I knew that my parents are going to pass before me and that was the reason and I didn't want to experience it so we'll go through all the rest of us here now so how does your stuttering volcano erupt okay now I'm going to talk about me here but I want you to pick out everything that you see in those slides that you can relate to everything because everything is there if you stutter most of this is going to relate to you if you don't stutter there certain aspects of us like tension and everything else within the body will but if you stutter everything is going to relate to you this is Michael OA in 1999 I was 44 years of age and I decided to go to get help and support so this is me I had a very severe stutter I was very overt I had body movements I spat when I had a severe block I struggled I had facial struggles I blinking and the physical struggle went right through my body and especially in the articulators in the face where we know what happens why did all that happen all that happens was inside my stuttering and I called it my stuttering volcano inside that lay shame negative responses I was a physical wreck that showed feared words sounds situations I had guilt I felt isolation I had no belief in my verbal communication I had verbal stress anxiety I had irrational fear irrational mind negative speaking experiences I had so that I wrote a book I wrote this book and it's about myself in 2007 now I don't want to brag or anything else but excluding I give two copies of the book to every every public library in my country and I put one book into every National and secondary school in the country and 42,45 is the total number of the books that I don't have now that I had to get printed so that will tell you people read it they say for every one person that reads a book on selfhelp Tri people are going to read it as well okay so that's it now what was my trigger I had massive amount of triggers regarding the trigger for the eruption of that sing volcano but when I took it all apart after about three years working on my speech I stripped it down to its core and I stripped it down and I was ruthless with it to find that sensitivity of it and the fear of rejection because of it were the main drivers between the whole thing and if I didn't look after the core I wasn't going to deal with everything that was in the volcano so the triggers were a big thing so we just move it on to the next slide where Michael OA is now and just put your own name on this put your own name on where you are and where are you now this is me right now there is no sing eruption you can't see the articulator struggle I'm not holding back I'm not using tricks I'm not here to show off to you what a powerful speaker I am that's how I feel I don't mind saying that because I need to tell myself that every day there is no fuel within the volcano to erupt so there's no Melting Pot there's no verbal fear there's no verbal Sensi positivity and above all I don't feel rejection now this is a very important point my fear levels my rejection levels were on two levels people thought it was a a fear of rejection of myself no it wasn't if it was KH if it was Jamie if it was Mary and I was sitting with you in your local restaurant or cafeteria and a friend of your came in and they started talk and we say it was to Mary and they asked me what where I was from that would be a big big trigger so when I blocked and I blocked and I blocked my fear of rejection there was they would reject Mary for hanging around like somebody who couldn't even say his name so can you see where that comes from can you relate to that yourself the verbal sensitivity was that I wanted to speak but I was afraid if I did speak I would stutter so it wasn't the fear of speaking when I took it apart it was the fear of stuttering while I spoke because when I was on my own I did not stutter I knew I could speak and a lot of people overt and covert and that's a very important Point as well during my journey out of stuttering I spent about nine months as somebody who was covert I was using tricks of words sound situations I was doing all all of that and I knew I was in the wrong place place I knew it and it's something else that I need to transition through being C so I wouldn't allow myself to have the physical blocks that would aride and everything that was going back into my old mindset and mentality and that had mumblings in that stuttering volcano okay so how does my starting volcano erupt how does your stering volcano erupt physiologic physiological reactions as well as physical verbal reactions of stammering need to be addressed so the whole stuttering system needs to be addressed you go into a speech therapist and you're in a clinic and your mother is outside and the speech therapist brings you in and they have a metronome and you're saying Howell now brown cow Howell now brown cow the little cow jumped over the moon all of that stuff and this is in my memory as a child and they bring in my mother after about half an hour and they show the Fantastic progress that Michael has made in half an hour in the first maybe three or four times my wife or my mother was over the mo but I wasn't out on the street when I was back to AR because I had no metronome and my mother had it CED after about a month but we went to speech therapy I was doing it for about two years and we went up to Dublin now we had to get on a train in the morning and we had to travel three hours the train journey to Dublin in the morning was three hours and it didn't matter if it was raining we went and when we arrived we were met not by the speech terapist but by three coats at this time I was 10 years of age and they brought me in on my own and they gave me and up on the wall were big pieces of wood you were given shapes circles and triangles and un name it and you were asked to put all of these into their correct slots the three of them were there with their charts and all of them were writing and sometimes one of them would asked me a question and of course I would struggle mean to say they were strangers to me I never met them before and this went on for about again about half an hour and they had a break I went out to my mother and they called in my mother and myself again and they said to my mother we've carried out a quick survey on your son and everything else and we can honestly tell you Mrs OA that there's not nothing mentally wrong with your song my mother was a very quite spoken woman it was the first time I ever saw her losing her temper that time and I never saw it after and she she lamb based him she told him how can you say that and give him a test for that when he's always in the top two of his class in school and she said and she said us and I could hear her and she meant us and if they had answered her back she would have gone through them and she said how can that be that he can speak on his own and he doesn't startle but yes you have tested him today to see was there anything mentally wrong with him from that point both of my parents lost all confidence in speech therapy even though the Health Service provided us with speech therapy and I came home after doing several sessions with different people and I taught my mother I was 14 and I said m'am I'm not doing that anymore she sat down on the chair and she said do you know what she said I am glad and I couldn't wait for you to make your own mind up on that because she said as soon as you decided that that wasn't working that was the time to stop so that's what happened we need to understand our own personal head game of stuttering stuttering is all about what's between our barriers negative thought processes generate negative feelings which generate negative physical reactions which generate the fuel supply for the Eternal Flame of your storing volcano to consistently erupt Now read that take it in and does that affect you because deep inside your brain lives verbal fear we have programmed ourselves to react to verbal fear we programmed ourselves to react to shame we have a dictionary of feared words sounds situations physical and mental emotion vulnerabilities vulnerabilities how vulnerable did your stering make you or is making you right now and then there's your historical verbal memories I just mention two because I mentioned them the beating off the none at four is still there the beting of the none or the teacher who's the principal at seven is still there and I tell you why it's still there because I passed that Convent where that none gave me the B meeting maybe two or three times a week and I can't stop it and when I was 24 I had to go and find out what it was why can I not do that and the teacher he bought a site on a council estate on a corner and he built a bungalow he was the only one that built a house on that Council estate and years later I done a lot of work on that Council estate it was the same thing every time I passed that her because I knew where he lived I thought of him and at the age of 24 I could afford it I went and I got professional advice of why that was happened and the explanation was from three different people because the same answer anything that affects the child at that age it's called childhood trauma it never leaves you it never leaves you it's how the mind is programmed it never leaves you and I can honestly say that that moment every time I pass there it's a fleeting thought it doesn't affect me though but it's a fleing thought that I can't stop including the negative mental reactions negative physical experiences all that we mentally attach to stuttering so how much of your life outside of stuttering do you attach to stuttering what we're talking about here is how does it affect you in walk how does it affect your social how does it affect relationships how does it affect you're studying for University College etc etc how does your stuttering volcano erupt they are deep seizes reservoirs of negative varable experiences fact they're there you know it you know it because you think about them to be dealt with and to manage your challenge with storing and this takes courage it takes knowledge because you need to know know what to do you need to know what to do it's dedication to application it's perseverance over a period of time and it's not a week it's not a month it's not a year it could be many years it takes patience and most importantly it takes support sorry the L of the starting volcano lives dormant depends on every everyone's willingness to change their personal status quo from negative reactions to empowering responses you need to know what to do you need to write them down and you need to have a hierarchy of your feared word sound situations and you need to track them down and break them down into manageable pieces so you're able to manage them in the first instance it's called called and I'll deal with that in a minute and there is a need to do that because they they are your triggers they are your feared words sounds situations they're your triggers so there's a need to track down what makes your stammering erupt so why does it erupt why are you in your own home and a stranger walks in and bang your environment hasn't changed the only thing has changed in your environment is somebody walked in the table hasn't moved the chairs hasn't moved the physicals stay the same but you have changed you have changed so it takes time patience and experimentation to find and apply your personal strategies and applications that's basically over a period of time what I did and also I'm a mentor for people who stutter and I give them the same principles only treating the articulator struggle this is the articulator struggle and when you block look at the articulator struggle it's impossible to say a word so we're going to deal with tension where is tension tension in the mind first that's where the tension starts we think we can control stering there is no control we'll deal with that in a moment as well only treating the articulat is not sufficient there is a need to go to the core and stop the lava from erupting to get to the core of the problem once the reservoir is hot and melting away increasing attention on articulator of struggle it will never be adequate because it's already starting it's already starting so you need to do something so what we need to do is to turn reaction that the mind has and we need in the real in the moment ourselves to consciously be able to manage that not to control it because it's already after happening so ask yourself why I stammer only gives you reasons asking yourself how gives you structure so how does it happen that it happens in a split second and I'll give you the components of your fear right now we talk about fear in the staring community and the most over used word in the staring Community where we should be explaining what are the components of your verbal fear I'll give you my comp my components and see can you see your components in my components the first one was chaos verbal chaos in an instant verbal panic in an instant verbal stress in an instant variable anxiety and this is the one because it's by three we do not need to stutter or to speak to stutter and here's why your first reaction is verbal anxiety it could be a week it could be a month it could be a year before a speaking situation it's called anticipatory anxiety you have in the moment anxiety and then you have post anxiety you're worrying about the perception of your listener where you had a bad speaking experience yourself you know or you think that your listener is judging you that's post anxiety so think of those three things do you do it anticipatory anxiety in the negative the whole time I am going to stutter here because it happened me before I'm going to stutter with this person before because before I stutter in front of him or her and that's how the mind works the mind is like a sponge it picks up everything but it doesn't judge but all it it judges is your reaction as soon as you go into tension and if you want to test yourself buy yourself a good sports watch and we'll deal with that in a second as well to remove suffering from your verbal communication you need to remove its structure the structure is what is within your veral volcano so you need to dissolve it you need to dissolve the negative neurons that you have developed in your brain all of us have learned our way into staring we've learned our way in nobody wrote a letter to Santa and said Dear Santa could I have a box of staring for Christmas when you got older you didn't write or you didn't order a box of stering off of Amazon and it arrived at your door that didn't happen that won't happen but from the time whatever the trigger was you started to make allowances and your mind started to protect you because it picked up the responses from your body and if you want to test yourself out and you're speaking well buy yourself a sports watch set your heart rate or blood pressure and everything else and when you're in that moment of that [Music] big block you look at your sports watch and you see the psych or physiological changes that are within your body your heart rate goes up your blood pressure goes up your face goes right all of that stuff is going on so that's what you need to do so thank you for attending and I hope you got something out of that I know it had to be quick but if there's any questions and you want to make your own opinions on it you're more than welcome and if you want me to open the slce again at any time you're more than welcome as well so as there any questions any comments can you see yourself in this absolutely lots of information to take away from that Michael for everyone yeah well I mean to say like that's what's going on mean to like it doesn't matter of what level it is doesn't matter it's going on and we need to be aware of it and for another aware of it and if we don't know what to do with it how to manage it it's going to happen because there's three stages in your journey out of Stuy whatever knowledge that you've learned from your Educators or your speech and language therapist or personal coach whatever it is you go through a period where you become competent with those skills but those skills need to be applied confidence over a period of time it turns into confidence you become confident and then when people ask me where I am I'm in maintenance I'm a person of verbal difference I stutter not fixed or I'm not cured but there's a lot I needed to manage there's a lot of knowledge I needed to apply and the next one was lying around thinking about it reading books listening to podcasts was never going to do it you need to get off your backside get yourself out there and prove it the pro is is what changes everything and that's the way it works and it's a cycle and the more you do it and the more you do it you're collecting the verbal evidence that you're on the right track once the verbal evidence is collected all those negative neurons that you've developed in your brain it's called a stering brain and this is a brain of a child who's newly born or it could be somebody with a small head this is a child with a small head there's a little point on that brain that is called your stuttering mind and that's where all that memory is collected so you're dealing with that and you develop millions of neurons negative neurons over your lifetime as a starter but the more you replace that with positive neurons you're dissolving the negative ones Millions dissolve every time you have a good confident speaking experience you're dissolving neurons replacing them with positive ones and the more you replace replace replace refurbish eventually you get to a stage and I would say that I'm at 98% now there still about 2% to go but that's the difference between do I want to be verbally genuine or do I want to be ver perfect the variably perfect is the n is the 100% for me the variably genuine is 98 I'm not really interested in 100 so I don't think anyone could be 100% um perfect all the time you need only to listen to people I mean to say we're not programmed whoever our creator was didn't create us to be perfect at anything and if you want to know this and understand that bu read autobiographies of great inventors great Sports people male or female now human nature doesn't allow us to be perfect you say Bol was the fastest human being on Earth could never maintain it Bo he has the knowledge he has the skills he knows what to do nature doesn't allow us doesn't allow us we're all going to get old our hair is going to fall we're going to get stiff we want to get arisis and as a sergeon taught me one time he said Michael soon as you hit 40 your body is preparing you to die I think he was right I see the head go down on everybody that's what he said he said you're like a big oak tree he said out the middle of the field and you're a big Oak and you're standing up against the wind and everything he said but unfortunately the leaves and the branches are fall off there not we can do so that's it well Mary did you get else ask could you relate to it what's up Michael nice to see your face hey you too did you get anything out that could you relate to it or was it a bit much oh no I can relate you were Michael you you are never a bit much you wouldn't want to tell my wife that yeah would you like that in [Laughter] writing yeah but there's a process there for everybody and everybody is different and what's wrong with starting over the years and I've seen it and I've worked with over 3,000 people at this stage Who start some of them are very severe some of them are mild some of them are so and so but it affects their life I mean to say why did they go to speech therapy why do they do this why do they do mindfulness why why because it gives them a concern with suffering it causes them a certain amount of pain pain of embarrassment all of that stuff that are not worthy low self-esteem and all that stuff and that's why the quacks will take the money off of those people because they're desperate they're desperate that's why and I can honestly say that having we have KH Harley on our team and Khan is an educator but like we've seen it because we've spoken to the Educators and the educator I I I would have been blessed if I had an educator who didn't want silence in their classroom the worst thing that the person who stutters the worst thing that can happen to them is that they're left in silence as a child because they feel uncomfortable and they feel isolated and that's the first time as a person of varable difference that's the first time they'll feel different and all you have to do is ask them when they're adults when did you notice that you were different just plant that word in their brain because they never heard it before because nobody ever asked them the question when did you feel different and they'll all go back to school could be 4 it could be 50 there was a woman asked her one time and she was 83 she was working our speech at 83 because the only she wanted in life she had a sister Living in America and she had another sister living in Canada and all that she wanted was every Easter to be able to make a phone call without stuttering and every Christmas that's all the lady want at three years of age it's not sad it's not sad that's yeah I kind of wish they would take the word fluent out of our vocabulary because nobody's fluent yeah exactly nobody nobody is 100% fluent whether they stutter or not and yet so many times we have this word in great big letters oh I want to be fluent well as I said Mary during the presentation that's what I realized I know now that when I'm out there in the real world I don't think it's tting and I don't want to show off because I work damn hard at it I can say it I've proved it I've done the heavy lifting you've done the heavy lifting where you are KH is an educator he's done the heavy lifting in life to bring him to where he is Jim's the same everybody else on this screen you've all done the heavy lifting to bring you to where you are now but we got help and support along the way from our parents our Educators universities jobs work and life's experiences but you done the heavy lifting nobody walked around the corner to any of us and I know that con is not a person of veral difference but nobody walked around the corner to any of us and said hey I heard you walking on your speech would you be able to say your name I think I can help you that's not going to happen ever so at the end of the day it's our ball we need to play with it and not ignore it if you want to do something about us people I've met and are perfectly happy with our life and I would never ever argue with that point because it's their life so that's it is there anybody else in the room who's there who has a comment or anything no they're all having lunch Mary that's what [Music] wrong anybody else any comments I don't know how long we have left because I can leave you go if you want to two minutes we have left Michael and Mary this is Lucy Lucy how are you okay I'm good I don't I don't have my my camera on because I'm cooking and I'm a mess I look a fright but anyway Michael I I wrote in the comment your just a A+ your presentation today you have just described the nature of stuttering to a it's what I went through I'm still working through the the process myself but yeah you just got it I I I just read this the other day um stuttering is a fear reaction and I mean that that's a simple um explanation and for some people it takes a lot of work to undo that but you've just you are just thank you so much for all you do for this stuttering Comm Community you are so appreciated well thank you very much I appreciate the compliment I was told a number of years ago that I couldn't take a compliment so I learned fairly quickly good and I I heard my old friend Mary there hi hi Mary and who whoever else is there hi I'm not turning my camera on but Tom and Trisha and the whole crew Marvin what a one a wonderful job they've all done so it's a bigger responsibility it's a bigger responsibility there is yeah there's a few things here to say just to finish it off there's two kind of verbal sufferings within a child and an adult and an experienced adult like me there's two kinds of verbal sufferings the two of them are the mind and the body so which one for you a personal verble difference even now at this moment which one suffers most is it your mind or your body that's one that will get you answers and stuttering life is all about creating we create choices we create chances we create changes and your life is evolved through the same principle but your journey through stering is evolved through the same principle we need to be creative in our journey out of it because because we were creative in our journey into it we created ways to avoid we created ways to hold back we creat us what to do what to say situations to avoid and we have three massive assets that are three times higher than normal speakers and the scale is number one the skill of awareness Three Times Higher because bio are we aware Three Times Higher observation and three times higher visualization the problem with the visualization is we used it in the negative we visualized oursel having problems with speaking situations and when we flip that when we flip to three of them to work to our advantage it's massive I remember I was I was in America one time and I met a man he he was a trainer of the Navy sales and I was talking to him at the bar and he he listened to my Irish accent and I told him about this starting community and I told him about the skills and he said you know what he said we sent people on a six Monon course to learn exactly what you're talking aware observation and visualization and I said how would that be used in the Battleground he said you need to know what's going on around you they vital if you guess if you get a six month stint of looking after the president which could happen or somebody important who's visiting visiting America and you're in the crowd your awareness has to be like that observation obser observe the crowd your visualization what are you going to do if something kicks off so if they do it and they need to go to college to do it just how lucky are we if we apply it in the right way so [Music] [Music]