Asusag
07-21-2008, 03:27 PM
I was drafting this as a reply to another thread. It started to get wordy though, so I thought I'd start a new thread.
I'm in no way a fluent speaker. I've been 100 times worse than I am now though. I don't know if it will be helpful to any of you or not, but here is my journey in a nutshell.
After about 5 years of heavy stuttering in Middle School and High School, (mostly)worthless speech therapy classes, and bad advice from family, the left side of my brain kicked in and I started to really wonder why I was stuttering. I knew plenty of phonics tools that were good band-aids for concealing my stutter a little, but I knew I couldn't spend the rest of my life using them. If it annoyed me to use them, how would the people who have to interact with me feel about it?
I started to think on it at night while I laid in bed. Looking in to myself and trying to find the root cause. My anxiety, my fear of rejection, public speaking, responsibility, confrontation, girls, my parents, and more specifically my father. Fear and anxiety seemed to be the common denominator. For some reason, I hadn't looked at that before.
Fear lead to anxiety which created both physical and mental blocks. I suffer(ed) from painful neck spasms, I clenched my jaw. I held in my frustrations with myself and my frustrations with people around me because I feared not being able to verbalize it properly. Swallowed my pride, grinned and bore it. When I didn't release that anger, it began to attack and punish me. It made my stuttering worse and created physical pain in my body. I thank God that I had the constitution to get through it.
For me, meditation was my way to improvement. I initially thought it was the hypnotist sessions I went to. Those did help, but not in the way there were supposedly intended to. I don't believe I was effected by subliminal messages telling me that "I was a fluent individual and that stuttering was in my past". It taught me that there were numerous benefits to learning to relax, controlling my breathing, and focusing on loosening every organ, joint, muscle, and nerve in my body, bit by bit. Slowing my heart rate, clearing my head, and yes, using positive suggestion. I've been at a level that I feel is acceptable for about 10 years now.
It felt silly at first. I'm a white boy from Chicago, not a Buddhist monk. But I did it privately and started to really benefit and look forward to doing it. It is a peaceful release of that anger and frustration. I do forget to do it for long periods of time though and I see a difference when that happens. I stutter more. It seems that the repercussion for my anxiety will always be stuttering and if I don't keep up with my treatment, I relapse. I guess everyone has something. Some peoples side-effect for anxiety is obesity, or anorexia, or drug abuse, or alcoholism, or whatever... with any disability, it takes persistent dedication towards managing it.
I guess that is about it. If anyone has any questions about it, feel free to send me a message or something. It feels good to get that out though, I hope that someone else can benefit from what I learned too. I know it won't work for everyone, but perhaps it will for others.
I'm in no way a fluent speaker. I've been 100 times worse than I am now though. I don't know if it will be helpful to any of you or not, but here is my journey in a nutshell.
After about 5 years of heavy stuttering in Middle School and High School, (mostly)worthless speech therapy classes, and bad advice from family, the left side of my brain kicked in and I started to really wonder why I was stuttering. I knew plenty of phonics tools that were good band-aids for concealing my stutter a little, but I knew I couldn't spend the rest of my life using them. If it annoyed me to use them, how would the people who have to interact with me feel about it?
I started to think on it at night while I laid in bed. Looking in to myself and trying to find the root cause. My anxiety, my fear of rejection, public speaking, responsibility, confrontation, girls, my parents, and more specifically my father. Fear and anxiety seemed to be the common denominator. For some reason, I hadn't looked at that before.
Fear lead to anxiety which created both physical and mental blocks. I suffer(ed) from painful neck spasms, I clenched my jaw. I held in my frustrations with myself and my frustrations with people around me because I feared not being able to verbalize it properly. Swallowed my pride, grinned and bore it. When I didn't release that anger, it began to attack and punish me. It made my stuttering worse and created physical pain in my body. I thank God that I had the constitution to get through it.
For me, meditation was my way to improvement. I initially thought it was the hypnotist sessions I went to. Those did help, but not in the way there were supposedly intended to. I don't believe I was effected by subliminal messages telling me that "I was a fluent individual and that stuttering was in my past". It taught me that there were numerous benefits to learning to relax, controlling my breathing, and focusing on loosening every organ, joint, muscle, and nerve in my body, bit by bit. Slowing my heart rate, clearing my head, and yes, using positive suggestion. I've been at a level that I feel is acceptable for about 10 years now.
It felt silly at first. I'm a white boy from Chicago, not a Buddhist monk. But I did it privately and started to really benefit and look forward to doing it. It is a peaceful release of that anger and frustration. I do forget to do it for long periods of time though and I see a difference when that happens. I stutter more. It seems that the repercussion for my anxiety will always be stuttering and if I don't keep up with my treatment, I relapse. I guess everyone has something. Some peoples side-effect for anxiety is obesity, or anorexia, or drug abuse, or alcoholism, or whatever... with any disability, it takes persistent dedication towards managing it.
I guess that is about it. If anyone has any questions about it, feel free to send me a message or something. It feels good to get that out though, I hope that someone else can benefit from what I learned too. I know it won't work for everyone, but perhaps it will for others.