Pixie-Rae

The Beautiful Pixie

The following is from an absolutely amazing person I met on TikTok she is such a lovely person I just had to have her on my blog. So please take a few minutes to read her story and hopefully you will find her as inspirational as I have…

My name is Pixie-Rae and I live in Devon in the United Kingdom.

Like most of the word, when the UK went into its first national lockdown, my mental health took a battering. I suffer with anxiety anyway but the unknowingness of what what happening in the world really triggered it to a new level. I had lost my mother to suicide a couple of years before covid so this was all quite a lot for my brain to process. I downloaded TikTok like the rest of the world passing the time making silly videos not really having a care or understanding of how the app works, and I’ve never spoke on camera.

Being a key worker working in a special needs school, I was one of the first to start going back into work after about 6 months of lockdown. It was then that I realised that my speech wasn’t as fluent as it use to be. I would block almost instantly when talking to co workers- it was quite frightening as I didn’t know what was happening to me. It didn’t take long for the blocks to progress into something I already had experienced before (Stammering)

As a young kid I had a stammer, but I honestly remember hardly anything about it. The Stammering and Blocking caused my anxiety to sky rocket, and I also noticed that I was starting to twitch quite a bit. I contacted STAMMA.org who assured me I wasn’t going mad and that I probably had what’s called a “reoccurrence of a childhood stammer” My GP referred me to a speech and language expert, and through regular sessions with her we came up with the theory that the trauma of my mums suicide combined with the pressure of lockdown, just triggered my stammer to return. I found it very difficult to accept, I felt like a complete weirdo, and was terrified that people would think I was putting it on.

Before lockdown I was fluent in speech and now here I am getting stuck on nearly every other word. It battered my confidence and I ended up having a nervous breakdown and being signed of work for 4 months at the beginning of 2021. In this time I went back to scrolling TIkTok and was desperately trying to find if there was anyone else like me I could relate to. I genuinely thought I had gone mad. I found a creator who aslo stammered and was amazed at how openly she spoke about hers. We spoke on private messages quite a lot and one day I decided to talk on camera for the first time. I didn’t plan what I was going to say, as I wanted my speech to happen naturally, and one thing I had learnt about my stammer, is that if I reversed lines well enough, I don’t get stuck on them. I opened my mouth and stammer time was born! In this video I asked “what made you smile today?” I had just started to go back to work and so had set myself the personal goal to always find a smile in everyday. I was overwhelmed with the support I recieved. My account grew, and it sounds ridiculous but it helped me to become so more accepting on my stammer. I don’t go to speech and language appointments anymore, I decided that just letting my speech be the way it is is a hell of a lot easier then trying to hide it. My speech therapist did say that just as quickly as my stammer came on it could just as quickly go away. Either way, I’m accepting and happy.I continue to make daily “stammer time” videos asking people what made them smile and educate in any which way I can about stammering with the little knowledge but first hand experience that I do have. I’ve also been diagnosed with a movement disorder by the GP- currently waiting assessment from the neurologist to see if there’s anything else to be concerned about. My movements usually happen as away to get out of a stammer or block, but I do have occasional moter tics that happen without speech involved. TikTok has been my saving grace getting me out of a dark place and helping me to spread joy and smiles and be comfortable with my speech as it is.