What You Can Do to Help Yourself

 

If only you could talk without stuttering!  You may be frustrated when stuttering occurs.  You may get dis­couraged and angry with yourself and at the world.  Nothing you try seems to be effective for long.  At its mildest, stut­tering can be annoying.  At its worst, it interferes greatly with communication and with your life.  Past experiences may have strengthened the belief that nothing you do will make any difference in how you talk. That’s where you’re wrong.

 

 

To begin with, change your focus.  One of the most difficult concepts to grasp is this: the behavior that occurs when you try-not-to-stutter contributes to the severity of the stuttering.  Try the opposite behavior: try to stutter.  Become very familiar with exactly what you do while stuttering if you are to change it.  Too difficult?  You simply want the stuttering to go away — never to occur again.  That’s a normal reaction.  You dislike repeating.  You do not want to hear or see or physically feel stuttering.  The experiences of feeling “stuck” are frustrating and perhaps frightening.  Tremors in your lips or jaw may give rise to panic.  It is hard work.  Harder than you have ever done before.  It is less fearful to study and analyze stuttering under the guidance of a fluency therapist.  But you can do some of the identifying and categorizing of behavior on your own if you remember to do this “change work” in small doses.  Don’t overwhelm yourself.  Tomorrow is another day.  It took years for stuttering to develop to the level and in the particular pattern that occurs at this point in time.  The process of unraveling the pattern and changing the disfluent behavior takes time also.

 

First, study how fluent talking is done.  You need to understand the way in which the activity of talking occurs physically.  Sometimes explanations are inaccurate because information is omitted in the writer’s attempt to simplify and to be brief.  Obtain a textbook from the library.  Search out information that provides an explanation of how  breathing for living  and  breathing for speaking  occur and differ.  Sit quietly.  Focus on breathing in a natural way.  Discover how air flows in and out of your mouth.  When you begin to speak, part of the process changes.  Discover how voice starts easily and gently when you are relaxed and unhurried.  Notice how your lips and tongue and lower jaw move to shape the air and voice into words.  Feel that you can move smoothly through a word and move from one word to another without stopping.  That’s fluency, or at least part of it.  Think about the number of words you can speak comfortably in a sentence without straining for air.  Focus on the speed of talking.  Some words in a sentence are said quickly; others are said more slowly to make the message meaningful.  The pitch of your voice rises when asking a question and loudness increases when angry.  When you talk fluently, many physical actions occur in a coordinated, sequenced fashion.  That’s one of the keys.  Study these actions.  Fluent talking is the behavior that you are trying to do more of.  You need a solid awareness of the fluency model.  Observe others when they talk fluently as well as observe yourself.  Take notes.  Don’t just enjoy fluency when it occurs.  Learn from it.  What does fluent talking sound like, look like, physically feel like in your body?  What does it emotionally feel like in your mind?

 

Second, study behavior.  Select a book on the introduction to psychology.  Read the chapters that discuss stimuli and responses and how they are chained together.  Learn how behavior can be strengthened or weakened, or counter-conditioned.  Stuttering behavior is complex to be sure, but it behaves in lawful or expected ways just as other behaviors do.  It is less difficult to shape stuttering than you may think.  Stuttering is predictable.  It can be altered through applying information from your study of behavior.  Incorporate that knowledge into the therapy plan you design.

 

Third, become informed about the nature of stuttering.  Much has been written which can reduce the mystery for you.  Experts have described the speech characteristics of stuttering (the repetitions, prolongations, or stopping of air flow, voice or movement); the accompanying behavior (such as jaw jerks, eye blinks, saying  um  or  well ); the typical feelings and attitudes; how stuttering develops over time; what is known about causes, and so on.  The depth of knowledge is your choice.  Be guided by your interest level and by a desire to become as objective and unemotional as possible about the disorder.

 

Fourth, develop accuracy in analyzing the stuttering in detail.  Analysis is not a task of counting stuttering moments.  Instead, determine which kinds of stuttering behavior you do such as repetitions, prolongations or stopping air flow, voice or movement.  Do several types of behavior occur in a sequence?  Is there a pattern?  Keep notes.  To observe merely that you repeat, for example, is not sufficiently descriptive to be helpful to you later.  Ask yourself what size unit is repeated:  a sound? a syllable?  a word?  How many times is a syllable repeated when stuttering mildly?  When stuttering severely?  Where within the word does the repeated portion occur: at the beginning?  Further within the word?  At a fast rate?  Is the repeated portion done with effort?  Examine each type of stuttering behavior that you do in similar detail

 

Fifth, develop ability to cope with the stuttering moment itself.  Build on your analysis skills.  Direct yourself to focus on the stuttering as it is occurring in the present time-frame.  Reliving past difficulty or anticipating future failure is unhelpful in this section of the “change work.”  The residue from these negative emotions provides few clues for coping effectively with stuttering as it is happening now.  As you learn to listen, to view, and to physically feel the stuttering, continue to ask: “What occurred right there?”  And “What did I do next?” and “Then what resulted?”  Hunt for the consequences of your actions.  Make notes on your findings.

 

Experiment with stuttering.  Choose a word.  Next, say that word while holding your breath.  Hopefully, you will find that it’s impossible.  But you can change that act of “breath holding” just as you will be able to change other stuttering behaviors.  How?  Think back to the way in which the word is said smoothly.  Focus on the feeling of movement.  Get a clear picture of that smoothly said word.  You can change consistently if you know clearly what you are doing and what you are trying to do.

 

Will this practice in “breath holding” or any other stuttering done purposely get out-of-control?  Temporarily it may.  Here’s how to cope.  Practice doing milder types of stuttering.  You can end the breath holding immediately by “letting go” of it.  Don’t finish the word.  Just stop.  Get calmer.  Try again, later or the next day.  Stay in contact with stuttering as much as you can in small doses.  Experiment similarly with the other types of stuttering behavior that you do.

 

Sixth, understand emotions.  Check out the psychology book again.  Look for sections which discuss emotions and their impact on performance and learning.  Fear and embarrassment — two common negative emotions — are known to interfere with ability to focus on and to perform an activity.  This holds true for speaking just as much as for sports.  What’s the issue?  Do such emotions prevent your entering fully into situations?  The information you derive from those speaking experiences will be inaccurate and mislead you.  In turn, you make errors in problem solving and the desired changes in your speech do not occur.

 

Devise a therapy plan to include practice in desensitizing yourself to disruptive emotion and to stuttering.  You won’t totally eliminate reactions to events that trigger stress for you, but you can learn to reduce the level of stress until communication is more manageable.  It is difficult to attempt speaking and to practice strategies once stuttering and fear seem to be out-of-control.  Most persons who stutter need the direction and support of a fluency therapist during this aspect of the “change work.”

 

Seventh, become an effective problem solver.  It’s not a complicated procedure.  Locate a book at the library that explains the steps of “how to problem-solve” and work to develop skills in using that format.  Apply this format to the changes you want to make in the stuttering behavior.  Problem solving is a logical and objective way to examine issues and to generate solutions.  Random trial-and-error wastes your time and energy.  It is not productive.

 

Eighth, consider the possibility that you may have two fluency problems: stuttering and cluttering.  Over half of those who stutter have both of them.  Does it really matter?  Absolutely.  Your therapy program should be revised to include strategies for both aspects if they exist.  Otherwise, stuttering improves very little.

 

Here’s one clue: In stuttering you know what you want to say but can’t get the word started.  Does your stuttering occur in response to talking too fast, having difficulty finding words or difficulty organizing your thoughts?  Do many ideas flood your mind quickly, but then you lose them before the idea is stated?  Determining whether you clutter in addition to stutter is not easy for a teen or adult.  The cluttering may be masked by severe stuttering and struggle behavior.  Expect the combination of problems that occur in cluttering to vary and to range in severity just as occurs with stuttering.

 

Here’s a coping strategy for cluttering: Slow your rate to give yourself more time to organize thoughts and retrieve words.  Then you will be attending to the message of speaking as well as the mechanics.

 

Is that all?  Of course not.  It is a bare-bones structure upon which to build.  It is the minimum in information and experiences which may enable you to make changes in your speech and emotions.  Think positively.  There is much you can do to make changes in the way you talk, and how you think about your talking, 

 

The results are worth the time and effort you put into the task.

 

Good luck in your quest for achieving your goals.