An exerpt from the book Self-Therapy for the Stutterer
 
By Malcolm Fraser
 
If you are like many stutterers, sometimes you be­come quite discouraged while you are working on improving your speech. This could be because you are not getting better as quickly as you think you should, or because, on occasion, you relapse and have a lot of difficulty.
 
The latter may occur when you are speaking more easily and you run into a particularly embarrassing situation and tense up and fail miserably. This makes you quite despondent and undermines what confidence you may have built up that you are making progress.1,2
 
Unfortunately, stuttering seems to be particularly susceptible to reoccurring.3 And it should be pointed out that there are several factors which are working against your efforts and which tend to cause or influence relapses or regression.
 
Relapses can occur because of natural tendencies to go back to using some of your old habits such as avoidances or denying your stuttering. You have begun to enjoy a certain amount of fluency; and to protect that fluency, your natural instincts influence you to react as you have been accustomed to doing for many years. Little facsimilies of your old stuttering habit may reappear.
 
There is no need to berate yourself when old habits recur. Still, when this happens you should recognize them as signals to get back on the job and review your compliance with the rules. And as you take care of these little avoidance feelings or any forcings, they will go away.
 
One factor which may contribute to frustration is the fact that almost every stutterer’s severity tends to vary from time to time. Sometimes you speak more fluently than at other times. Although this may result from different environmental conditions, it seems that such deviations may persist, and therefore a breakdown is more easily triggered.
 
Another possible drawback to improvement sometimes occurs when your hopes are built up prematurely. This may be when some particular rule or guideline you adopted caused you to make such rapid improvement that you became convinced it was the answer to your problem. And if confidence in that particular procedure is lessened by failure, it tends to make the outlook more discouraging.
 
It is true that occasionally some one rule or cor­rective procedure may be a large part of the answer to your problem.4 Generally, though, the application of the different procedures tends to assure more steady progress.2 
 
Another reason some people who stutter become discouraged is because they want and expect perfection which is unattainable. Some feel they should be able to talk perfectly with no hesitation or stumbl­ings whatsoever. To expect perfection tends to build up pressure which they don’t need. Normal speakers are not perfectly fluent, and your goal should be to work for easy speech with no strain.6,7 
 
Besides, it is possible that you could have better natural coordination between that part of your brain that controls your speech and the timing sequence of your speech muscle action. That is also true of other people.
 
But there may be more reason for this being true in your case, particularly if your stuttering started when you were quite young. As a child, you may have had more hesitations or stumblings when learning to talk than other children. And some lack of better natural coordination mentioned above could have contributed to the development of your stuttering.
 
As you know, coordination is a physical attribute which varies with the individual. Just as some children learn to walk earlier than others, some learn to talk more easily than others. In adults, for instance, a champion golfer has superior coordination between that part of the brain which controls body movements and their action in guiding his golf clubs. In any case, a goal of perfection in speech is impractical for those who stutter.8 
 
Most stutterers experience intervals of relative fluency filled with hope followed by episodes of blocking filled with despair. When relapse from fluency occurs, try to learn how to identify the source of the relapse. The answer should be somewhere in this book. Check your observance of the guidelines, and whenever you talk, don’t force or struggle—stutter easily.
 
However, we would emphasize that there is no need to feel guilty every time you stutter—it doesn’t mean that you are a failure. Most stutterers get discouraged at times. Stuttering is a tough enemy and needs to be beaten down time and time again into submission.9 Accept this fact. Therapy may sometimes be an experience in frustration, but possibly you may be able to look on its experiences as having the possibility of revealing what might be done to achieve better speech.
 
With the high probability of relapse, it is difficult to bring about fluency quickly. It takes time. The most reliable way to bring about a lasting reduction of stuttering is to do it slowly and gradually.
 

1 Every stutterer will have some ups and downs and the course of improvement is seldom a smooth course. (Kamhi)

2 Despite progress there will be occasional days of poor talking for disorganizing stresses are sure to intervene. (Bluemel)

3 The central problem of treatment is not the difficulty of bringing about fluency, but the high probability of relapse; few quick cures are likely to be durable; and in general the most reliable way to achieve a lasting reduction of stuttering is to do it slowly and gradually through a process that enlists the stutterers’ comprehension of what they do when they stutter, why they do it, and how and why they are capable of altering their behavior. (Bloodstein)

4 We are all different; what helps one stutterer may not work for another. (Garland)

5 Fluency, like confidence comes slowly and slips back from time to time. (Guitar)

6 Don’t waste your time and frustrate yourself by trying to speak with perfect fluency. (Sheehan)

7 Lessen your demands on yourself and on others for perfect speech and total acceptance. (Barbara)

8 Stutterers may be poorer than non-stutterers in coordinating the speech production processes. But despite being at the lower end of the normal distribution in coordinative ability, most stutterers are not so poor in these abilities that they cannot produce fluent speech. (Kamhi)

9 It requires patience and a willingness to accept reoccurrences as well as remissions. (Garland)