A Stammerer's Tale to Storytelling | Tom Wells | TEDxOxford

stammerers have traditionally seen their stammer in two ways to see it as a challenge to overcome to become flent or to use self-help to completely ignore it all together and while I applaud those who continue to fight to normalize stammering in our communities like the traditional approaches is seem to me a convoluted way to view the stammering is shaped by the stories that stammerers and non- stammerers tell themselves and each other like any protagonist in a story The accomplishment of a goal does not capture our immediate attention but instead how they get there for example homers the hesy accounts and is his Grand Adventure to return to his homeland hipa after the Trojan War as well as illustrate the development of his character so he can reunite with his wife Penelope this mythical Journey has been used by novelists and Poets to suggest that what we believe is the ultimate point of our life might not encapsulate what life entails CP kari's poem hitha captures this Essence to embrace all lived moments including a Stam and any other obstacle and make them our own a stanza of the poem goes something like this keep itha always in your mind arriving there is what you're destined for but don't hurry the journey at all better if it lasts for years so you're old by the time you reach the island wealthy with all you've gained on the way not expecting hitha to make you rich for for me this stza captures what we can learn from the good and the bad and while I'm only 20 I realize that we should not be afraid or hesitant to accomplish what we want to do in our life within reason of course and most of the time it will go wrong for example I speech is like my dancing both intend to be good but neither quite get there and that's why I'm here today to share my Odyssey about how I learn to let the story shine through so let us begin once upon a time there was a kid with a stammer and their initial love was to learn about the world but the world did not care about them they laughed at them threw them on the trash he for a best relegate them to a secondary role out of fear and Desperation and shame they tried to find a cure to fix this curse in order to be received like everyone else however hard they tried they just could not Shake It Off does this Min story sound cliche it it it it has been told many times by stanas including myself in personal settings professional environments and even here on the Ted stage but to break a cliche like the social taboo on stammering we have to keep continuously telling that story until the listener realizes how absurd that cliche is but don't get me wrong stories and cliches are fundamental to our our lived experiences but we have to remember that they can bring us crushing down as well as Lift us up when I was a kid my parents used to tell me wonderful stories just before I went to sleep that used to combine our daily holiday activities with fantasy elements we used to tell stories of dwarfs and dragons that used to inhabit Woodland Glens and caves that we had previously walked by on a country walk it was a magical moment this verbal Act of Storytelling brought us closer together as a family but as I ventured through secondary school and The Wider Community I contributed to fewer and fewer stories I had reached the inevitable point in ad esence where I was more I was more susceptible to the ideas of fitting in and being normal I blame the cliche teen American films that I used to watch when I was a kid the sort of films that used to categorize students into clear distinctive oops for example geeks nerds losers cool kids Che leaders Etc and if we apply that same logic to stammering for when I was in secondary school well I could tell you that I would been follower mascot and Captain all roll into one however these thoughts were not just a phase I was go going through they were embedded by the lack of exposure I had to storing you would have thought that with 3 million people here in the UK who stammer you would have thought I would had heard something seen something or even just bumped into someone to remind myself that stammering is not aboral but no like most sters I started on a lone Adventure we are often jolted to a new way of thinking when necessity forces us to change the moment for me happened after a secondary school play rehearsal of cses Elon the Witch and the Wardrobe I had to fill in for an other student who could not make it I got so excited and thrilled that I could play an agent character for this one rehearsal and you know what I thought I did pretty well with a few minor hiccups but afterwards the director called me over to have a conversation in context the director was also my gcsc drama te teacher of course he wanted me to get decent marks for my performances due to my stammer however and the clear difficulties I had in the rehearsal the number one advice was to focus on fluency and the other vocal pointers like pitch pause Pace ination tone Etc would naturally follow well I'm sure you can all hear but most of the time fluency did not come the more I tried the worse my stem became until I found myself in a rup I had to teach myself to learn to love and appreciate the memories stories and experiences that were being shared around me but it is one thing to love and appreciate somebody else's story but it's another thing else entirely to go and live your own but it is a great thing that we all live our own Grand Adventures even if we don't explicitly call them that Christopher bers the seven Asic plots introduced a concept that there were seven essential and artive traits that most stories contain overcoming the monster rights to riches the quest voyage and return tragedy comedy and rebirth well I had those elements I had my monster my stamina and my negativity I had my my quest to become fluent and noral I had my Voyage to learn as many SP speech techniques as I could and at the start well at the start I found my situation was quite tragic but the greatest stories I find are the ones that diverge greatly from your initial expectations who see see growing up I generally held the common interpretation of the rags to riches trait I generally believed a happy life I had to transform myself from a stammerer and an introvert to a well-renowned fluent speaker extroverted charismatic Etc sound a little ridiculous it was and it seems in our hustle culture we seem to latch onto the stories that transform the ordinary into the extraordinary so the question may have is in your mind is why I changed strategy about my stammer I'm asking it it has taken a long long time and patience to accept and love my stomach my first inclination as I had changed and diverted from my original view was that my purpose had changed every story ever told has a central message or theme that underpins everything else and if it doesn't well it's a pretty rubbish story as it has no Solid Ground to stand upon but this is not simply a literary Technique we can strongly see this in life Victor Franco's man search from heing explained how he survived in Nazi concentration camps by finding an explicit meaning and purpose to keep his sanity intact and all our lives illustrate the need and requirement for this solid foundation a year after the school play rehearsal that started my journey I had my first major breakthrough another Drama teacher introduced me to the concept of stasis in the very weird but remarkable way he told of a story of seeing in the sheet in the field laying on its back giving up life and died his point was to illustrate that we all need to seek opportunities and moments to actively shape our life of course this speech in my school assembly was just supposed to encourage my year group to buckled down to rise for our GCS long before we realized they were going to be celed due to the covid pandemic but this speech flipped how I viewed my stummer and it pains me to admit this as I don't want to rub their ego anymore than I have to but a true Sage was hidden in plain sight a real happiness for me now is cliche but to experience the moments with friends and family I've realized through my journey with quakerism and Christianity to relinquish control fear worry concern stress that I place on my own speech and how I present myself to the world it reminds me of Christopher Constantino's Ted Talk that isama is a great teacher for somebody to learn how to become vorable some think we tend to forget as a society and the meaning and purpose that we give ourselves could be greater than we could ever IM imine our actions impact how other people see the world either positively or tively we all act as the north star or a lith house that directly lead somebody else to a particular destination thought process or feeling and it this inspiration and this idea that encouraged me to write a few articles for the British stabing Association or stammer the ability to share my story with others encourag me to think about my own past learn how other people kind of s my stammer but it also Ena me to learn how other people saw the condition and saw life in short it is when looking at life that the buzz and joy that all life experience comes didn't ey maybe all I can say is that my story is just observing the smiles the joys the laughs that captures and What Makes Us hum human thingss sometimes when I look out of the window I still get the common phenomenon of missing out sometimes when I talk to friends and family I still get frustrated that words don't flow comfortably out however I've realized that although I'm not the most animate or chattiest person you meet a stammer is actual reminder that we all have our strengths and our imitations that enrich all our lives and I don't have a perfect voice but it is glorious to realize that a speech impediment or any other obstacle does not deny us the gift of stories and their telling and that's why I will return to CP kfi's poem hia and if you find her poor Etha won't help for you wise as you will have become so full of experience you will have understood by them what these hipas mean thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 3,402

Keywords: Acceptance, English, Life, Storytelling, TEDxTalks, Voice, [TEDxEID:57064]

Id: zLy4vyI7NSI

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024