Some Helpful Attitudes Underlying Success in Therapy

 

 

 

The Power of Constructive Assertiveness. A few years ago, Norman Vincent Peale popularized a set of attitudes in his book, The Power of Positive Thinking. One of the principles that I found of most value in changing my stuttering problem might be called constructive assertiveness. Like many of you, one of the most common and most debilitating characteristics of my problem was my habit of avoiding. I continually searched for ways to get around saying words on which I expected to stutter. There was almost no limit to what I would do to avoid situations in which I feared my stuttering would em­barrass me. Going to a party would be an extremely tiring event because the entire evening would be spent trying to stay alert for words on which I might stutter and finding ways to avoid saying them.

 

Fortunately, even before I began active therapy, I found out that avoidance only makes the fear worse. While serving in the army, I had written a speech pathologist asking for help. He informed me he would be glad to see me after I was out of the service and gave me a few suggestions as to what I could do in the meantime. His most important suggestion was to begin to lick the problem of avoidance. He suggested I go ahead and say those words on which I expected to stutter and to go ahead and enter those situations which I normally avoided. I began to try it. It was hard, but soon I found that the temporary discomfort of struggling through a difficult word was far better than the constant vigilance and search for the easy way out. Through the years, I have found that this is still one of the best ways to reduce my anxiety and to improve my speech when I again begin to have trouble.

 

Being assertive means being aggressive. You don’t need a therapist to harness this power. Search for those words or situations that are beginning to bug you rather than hiding them until they build up to giant fears. If you stutter on a particular word, you can deliberately use the word again in other conversations until the fear is gone. If a certain situation makes you tense so talking is difficult you can go back into similar situations until you feel more at ease. Where you used to avoid, search for positive constructive ways to reduce your fear and struggle. At times, it means bearing some temporary embarrassment while you stick it out on a hard word, but overall you’ll find that your fear, tension, and struggle are less when you practice constructive assertiveness.

 

Exploring the Dreaded Unknown. Early in my therapy program, I made a startling discovery. Although I had stuttered for years, I really did not know much about what I did with my speech apparatus as I stuttered. Like many other persons who stutter, I had been so embarrassed when I was stuttering, that my total attention was drawn to trying to “get out of” my seemingly helpless struggle against an unexplainable “block.” In therapy, my clinicians helped me learn to study my speech behaviors and to analyze what I was doing at those moments when I was struggling. Many of the things I was doing interfered with fluency more than they helped. Although in the past I’d repressed awareness of my stuttering behaviors, I now found that much was to be learned from encountering and analyzing them. You, too, can explore the unknown. When you do, you may find that you push your lips together too hard or jam your tongue against the roof of your mouth. You may notice that as you start to say a word, you build up too much tension. Once you begin to see what you are doing that makes talking difficult, you find that much of this behavior is controllable. Concentrate on changing what you do when you stutter by doing differently some of the things that seem to interfere with your fluency. Stuttering will then lose some of its magical powers and become only those things which you do. Eventually you should make a very important discovery; that is, that you are not completely helpless at the moment you are stuttering.

 

Defining Realistic Obtainable Goals. Another helpful attribute that ties directly into the changes we’ve just been discussing is to set for yourself realistic and definable goals. Many of you will have, as I did, a rather perfectionistic attitude toward speaking. I wanted complete fluency with absolutely no stuttering. Anything less was a failure.

 

When you realize that all speakers have some hesitancy and disfluency in their speech, and when you realize that it is unrealistic to expect to change completely and immediately a problem you’ve lived with for years, you will be able to get satisfaction from small gains and to have greater tolerance for those difficulties you still encounter. Rather than hoping for complete fluency in each situation, work towards more realistic goals of improvement in certain specific behaviors, such as reduction of excessive lip tension.

 

Reducing the Importance of Stuttering. One of the hardest things for me to learn was that the problem of stuttering is not the worst thing that can happen. For years I had felt stuttering was the biggest problem in life and this affected my entire self-perception. I was definitely handicapped because I was a member of the small minority that stuttered. Getting older has many disadvantages, but it had the advantage of helping me put things in perspective. As I encountered other persons with other problems, I eventually realized that there are many difficulties worse than stuttering. One can still do most of what he wishes even if he does stutter.

 

Putting stuttering in a more realistic perspective may reduce some of your tension and make it easier for you to work on it. You should feel less embarrassed when it does occur, and you can stop thinking of yourself as a handicapped individual and thus improve your overall self-confidence.

 

Maintaining Improvements. Many of you who stutter have had the experience of getting better during therapy only to find yourself having trouble again when therapy is discontinued. This event, sometimes called a relapse, frequently leads to demorali­zation and the failure complex—a feeling that there’s little use in trying to change your stuttering since it will probably return.

 

Frequently the person who has had this experience overacts to the return of struggle behaviors. He may well forget that even the amount of trouble he is having now is not nearly as frequent nor as severe as it was formerly. The fear of stuttering suddenly reappears and avoidance and struggle behaviors soon follow. Rather than accept this defeatist attitude, it’s far better to go back to the basic principles; that is, determine what specific things you’re doing and start again to do those things which you’ve found make talking easier.

 

Too many persons who stutter stop too soon after gaining some fluency and losing some of the fear. They fail to realize that stuttering behaviors have been learned on a complex reinforcement schedule over a long period of time. They fail to do those things which will maintain the new speaking behaviors. In all kinds of learning we normally go through three stages: (1) establishment of the new habit, (2) transfer of the habit to different situations, and (3) maintenance of the new behavior. If, after making some positive changes in your speech behavior, you revert to those attitudes and practices that originally were a part of the problem, you may find that the problem reappears.

 

To maintain the progress you’ve made in therapy it’s wise to enlarge your speaking horizons. Now’s the time to take that course in public speaking you’ve always dreaded or to begin to accept more invitations to social events where you know you’ll have to meet a lot of people. Just as it’s difficult to imagine maintaining recently learned swimming skills when you don’t continue to go swimming, it seems pretty hard to imagine maintaining newly acquired attitudes and behaviors in speaking if you don’t continue to enter a lot of speaking situations.

 

I hope some of my experiences will be helpful to you. Before ending, however, I must express a sincere debt of gratitude to the two persons who served as my clinicians some twenty-five years ago. They know who they are. I probably could have made many of the changes I’ve made without them, but I’m convinced they helped change my life for the better.