Hello everyone,
I recently came back from a 2 weeks long trip after attending a course for which I had to travel to a city far from my place in the north of India. I want to tell you all that never before I had been so much confident about my speech during such a long trip. Now I was able to speak easily in all speaking situations, with anyone & at any time. Though I still experience fears but they are lot more manageable thanks to AST’s.

Situations like, when having general face to face conversation with strangers or course participants, when asking a doubt during the ongoing class, introducing myself in front of the class to the professor went on smoothly and I could speak a lot better with the use of crutches. I even give a short speech in front of the whole group consisting of 15 people & it went very well as I was able to express my views properly. This was when course coordinator asked each of us course participants to give our opinion & views about an issue. I was really happy each time I was successful in beating my fears and stutter threats. I used mixture of crutches and spoke immediately without thinking the words or framing sentences.

During my stay there I also tried to do the AST’s in the morning & read aloud but due to the hectic schedule of course I had to skip it on most of the days. I missed doing them as I felt more in control and confident in the days when I was able to do the AST and reading aloud. The course also had a 4 day field trip where we had to trek several kilometres per day & stay inside the forest which tested our endurance. Sometimes it was quite challenging to speak after you are tired and drained along with lack of sleep.

As I was suggested that I need to increase the comfort zone by 10% each time, I found that this trip was a big jump from my earlier comfort zone though I enjoyed the whole trip. There were ups and downs during the trip as on some occasions I found that I was hesitant and I encountered threats more so that time I spoke very less and used crutch 11 extensively. But overall, I was successful in having pleasant social interactions and made really good friends during the trip. Now my next goal is to keep expanding my comfort zone & to attain mastery over using crutches so that it becomes a habit and get better at using mixture of crutches in my speech.

Yes Leah I agree & Thank you for this advice! Will keep what you said in mind when I go out on a trip.

Thanks a lot Leah! I too think same about you that your speech sounds so good in SAM meetings that I cant believe you were once a PWS. Also I listened to your podcast & you verbally portrayed your experiences so beautifully that I could picture it happening in my mind. I really got inspired that how much one can progress if one stays consistent in his/her efforts and not give up. I think if every PWS learns to build a strong attitude like you they will expedite their self-cure way more fast and become the best public speakers.