Do you sometimes feel like your words just don’t come out? It’s frustrating and can be embarrassing. Difficulty speaking is a difficulty that many people face in their lives. Fortunately, there are ways to help yourself overcome difficulty speaking! The following 5 points will give you some ideas for how to deal with it:
Speak slowly and deliberately
Sometimes simply slowing down your speech can help with difficulty speaking. You might find that you don’t stutter or struggle to get the words out when you speak slowly, and it may even sound better!
Use word association
If difficulty talking is something that bothers your most often, try using a technique called “word association.” This means thinking of one specific word for each thing instead of saying its name in full. For example: if someone asks what kind of dog you have, say “Labrador” rather than “I have a black Labrador retriever named Fido who’s super friendly!” Not only will this keep your sentences shorter (which helps), but people are more likely to understand what you mean if they hear fewer details. It also reduces the chances that you will become anxious and start to have difficulty speaking.
Keep a journal
If you feel like difficulty speaking is getting worse, consider keeping a journal where you record your thoughts every day for a week or two. Writing things down can help improve difficult speech by allowing yourself to explore all the reasons why difficulty talking might be happening, whether it’s stress at work, anxiety about public speaking, or something else entirely. Come up with strategies that will allow you to deal with those factors more effectively moving forward. One way of doing this would be by writing out scripts of what you plan on saying beforehand so that knowing precisely what you’re going to say takes some of the pressure off during an interaction and makes it easier for others to understand your words clearly.
Take deep breaths before beginning to speak.
This will help you feel less anxious and provide your body with more oxygen to use when speaking. Additionally, breathing techniques will help you slow down and enunciate clearly. It will also make the words seem less rushed and easier to understand.
Practice slow speaking
By practicing a slow pace, you will have more time to think about what you want to say and give others around you enough space between sentences or phrases to process your words. Additionally, slowing down the speed of your speech shows those listening that you are careful with how you express yourself, which makes them feel as though their opinion matters, even if it’s not something good. This will help build trust and make people much more likely to listen carefully throughout an entire conversation rather than tuning out after a few seconds because what is being said doesn’t seem important.
To conclude, difficulty speaking can be improved by doing your best to slow down the speed at which you speak, carefully choosing clear and easy-to-understand words, allowing others around enough space, so they don’t feel rushed or pressured.