A new perspective on stuttering

[Tennismaster]

Hi everyone, I’m new here on the forum. I just wanted to talk about my history and current quest for fluency. I have stuttered for most of my life but it has been relatively mild. I remember that when I was six, my family went on vacation to Florida. There were some older kids playing by the hotel pool and I was talking with them. I think they assumed I could swim, so they pushed me into the deep end, and I almost drowned. Luckily, a girl jumped in and saved me. It was a very traumatic experience for me and I think it may have led to my stuttering. My stuttering wasn’t so bad until my sophomore year of high school. It got progressively worse and it hit a peak my freshman year of college. I could speak fairly fluently with my friends, but when it came to in class discussion, it was a nightmare and I felt like a fool.

When summer started that year (which was the summer of 2009), I decided to go on a personal quest for fluency. I tried speech therapy for one session, but my insurance wouldn’t cover the cost, so I decided to do self help (I’ll get back to speech therapy later). I started my quest last summer, and over the past year, I have read about 30 books on topics including, self-help, psychology, religion, and spirituality. My findings have led me to believe that stuttering is a mental problem that presents itself with physical symptoms, like stuttering when speaking. The reason I say this is that after observing myself closely, which is a skill I developed over the past year, I have noticed the stuttering mentality in many areas of my life, not just in speaking. I enjoy playing tennis and I have noticed the stuttering mentality present itself when I play tennis. When I speak, I am afraid to take risks because I fear that I will stutter and because of this, I stick to the safe words and hold myself back. In tennis, I noticed that when the pressure was on, I would not go for my shots. I would take the safe shot and hold myself back in my tennis strokes, just like in speech. This is a simple comparison, and I will not go into more depth right now, but I hope you can see my point. For me stuttering is not just a speech defect, but a defect in my thinking and attitdude. Thankfully, though, something can be done about that.

While reading many books, I came across a book that made me look at life in a whole new way. The book was called the “Power of the Subconscious Mind” by Dr. Joseph Murphy. To summarize as best as I can, everyone has a conscious (surface) mind and a subconscious (deeper) mind. The conscious mind is our thinking mind that we use to think and analyze the world. The subconscious mind is the mind that controls our heart, lungs, and it is that muscle memory that allows us to perform by habit. For me, I have constantly repeated to myself negative thoughts of lack, fear, and worry into my subconscious mind, so this is what results in my outer world. I believe that I have poisoned my inner mind with all the negativity and because I keep repeating these kinds of thoughts into my mind, the stuttering mentality is able to survive. I could go on about this for many more paragraphs , but I hope you see the point I am trying to convey here.

Anyways back to my life story. Last fall, I started speech therapy and was able to become perfectly fluent in the therapy room, but I still had problems speaking when I went back into the real world. I realized that I needed to supplement my speech therapy with a form of meditation / visualization. In these meditation sessions, I would see myself speaking fluently in all kinds of situations and I would quietly repeat positive affirmations to myself. I have noticed dramatic improvement in my speech in all kinds of situations and the rare fluent moments that I had in the past are becoming more and more regular. I believe that this is one of the reasons that people who successfully complete speech therapy relapse within a few days, weeks, or months. Since they have not changed their beliefs about who they are and still think negative about themselves, they cannot sustain that perfect speech. Although on the outside they speak fluently, in their deep mind, they are still stutterers. And whenever there is a battle between the conscious and subconscious mind, the subconscious mind will always win.

I have been going through the forum the past couple weeks and I read about many different views concerning stuttering. Many people are hoping for a miracle drug, like Pagoclone, which like speech therapy, only affects the symptoms, and does not help remove the root cause. That would be like tearing weeds from the surface, without removing the roots. The weeds will just grow back eventually, but if the roots are removed, then the weeds can never grow back. Also, many people have said that brain scans show a difference between a stutterer’s brain and a non-stutterer’s brain. This makes perfect sense because the behavior of stuttering has been imprinted in the brain through neural circuits, and the circuits for stuttering are being reinforced, while the circuits for fluent speech are withering away. If you can again strengthen the circuits for fluent speech, then the stutterer’s brain must surely change and look like a non-stutterer’s brain. This is all thanks to neuroplasticity, which is a term that simply means that the brain is not a permanent structure, but is ever-changing.

In summary, I just want to say that fluency is possible for the stutterer, but requires determination. Speech therapy will never work by itself because the entire stuttering system, like beliefs and perceptions about oneself, must be changed. Sorry for the really long post, but I felt like I needed to get all this out. I hope to further discuss anything I have said here with others on the forum.

[Nemo]

I think you have made some good points. The subconscious is one of the 'elephants' in the stuttering room; its importance is seldom discussed. Many of us have a 'stutterer's subconscious', which is one of the major reasons for relapse and therapy failure. "On the road to better fluency you have to take your subconscious with you" is my belief.

I also feel that people who stutter do not give enough attention to stress control. A major portion of stuttering is stress-related and can be decreased or eliminated by better tension management.

Remember the vicious circle of stuttering: stress > stuttering > psychological consequences such as bad self-confidence, bad self-image etc. > more stress > more stuttering ...

[skumar]

The saying "little things matter" has never been more true than in stuttering. I like the Hollins theory that goes as folows: Suttering is a mechnical phenomenon, somehow vocal cords lockup due to very fine breathing synchronizations failing to kick in. Vocal cord tensions are the root cause and stuttering as time passes causes keiniesological effects ie the vocal cord muscles actually learn to tense up on very minor cues kind of like a soccer player becomes a 'good player' just by playing everyday. A stuterrer becomes a good stutterer by stuterring all the time!

The only way I found to be fluent is by using this meta-technique. A meta-technique is a technique that has other techniques as its parameters :

1. Recogonise this as a serious problem like a physical disability. Respect the phenomenon that is happening like you would respect a worthy enemy and look him straight in the eye.

2. Now document and classify words and sounds that cause maximum problems in a day. Write them down, like consonants, combinations etc. then learn a technique like easy onset, relax vocal cords etc. a lot of such techniues are available.

3. Now practice these deliberately everyday. It might look trivial initially but it is not. What you are doing is what a soccer player hopes to do : Just play in the hope that his muscle memory builds. Just like a soccer player is not dissapointed if he cannot get something right in a game, you may not get things working in conversations. Just keep practice. time is the ultimate healer and it will make the vocal cord muscles learn fluency eventually.

4. All this process happens automatically for non-stutterers between the ages of 5-14 Years. For stutterers this went wrong. All stutter can do is keep trying and practice to get the muscle training the right way. This fact alone tells you the enormity of the problem and the need for constant practice.

I tried HCRI (hollins) and they follow a similar approach. I liked it because they do not offer a silver bullet, but do offer hope if you are willing to practice

[howeee]

i guess everbody is different, but in my opinion when a stutterer is so obsesses with his stuttering as you seem to be, it has a very negative effect.

I dont give my stuttering hardly a thought anymore, though I like to read some forums but I also like the Schwinn forum lol.

I would never read a book on stuttering therapy, though I love Marty Jezers book about his life as a stutterer. I dont care anything about any stuttering therapy, I know that not one can show a sceintific study that any of it works.

This attitude has taken me from a severe stutterer( I am sure caused by years and years of damaging stuttering therapy) to a mild to moderate stutterer. I am happy with that.

I am glad it works for you, but i think being that obsessed about stuttering has negative effects for most persons who stutter.

[skumar]

[QUOTE=howeee;46060]
You are so right. I found acceptance of the stuttering was the first step. Once I accepted it and was at peace with it then I began thinking on how to overcome those occasional blocks, no panic, just would be nice to do it if possible. Thats were HCRI's detailed techniques helped.

[Tennismaster]

Nemo and Skumar: You both make valid points that combined together could make a potent strategy against stuttering. Whenever we stutter, we are strengthening this “bad habit.” Because of this, whenever we enter a feared speaking situation, the pressure is raised, so we speak at the default setting, which is the stuttered speech. In our free time, by practicing reading aloud or speaking in front of the mirror, we teach our minds to speak in a different way. When we do this, we weaken the neural circuits involved in stuttering, and strengthen the neural circuits involved in fluent speech.

However, physically addressing the problem is only half the solution. In addition to physically reading, we must learn stress management techniques. If we don’t, then we will never be able to transfer this fluent speech into normal, everyday activities. By learning stress management techniques, we can learn to stay calm in the middle of the storm. If we are able to stay calm in the middle of a feared speaking situation, then we can change the result. For example, in the past if someone asked me my name, I would open my mouth right away and just get stuck on the “I” sound. I would get lost in the stutterer’s fog, like some people call it, and the past would just repeat itself over and over. By being able to stay calm, I could instead approach the situation in a different way and ease out the first word instead of fighting against the block. By doing this, I was not acting unconsciously but I was acting with a specific goal in mind. Another thing I noticed is that I gradually became more and more fluent in situations where I would have stuttered in the past. These two approaches (physical and mental) must be diligently practiced every day in order to see results. If anyone is expecting to see a miracle instant cure, then they are only setting themselves up for disappointment. Too many people give up before the practice has had a chance to sink in. It must be firmly impressed upon the subconscious mind like I mentioned in my last post. For me at least, my moments of fluency would increase more and more and this cycle of success only inspired me to keep practicing.

Like Nemo said, the cycle of stuttering is a vicious one because of all the negative emotions involved. However, if you can break the cycle of stuttering and put yourself in a cycle of success, by replacing negative emotions with positive ones, then dramatic results can be obtained. Convincing yourself that you can succeed is the hard part. Once you are able to do that, it’s all downhill after that. Just make sure you don’t go too fast…

[Nemo]

I like the Hollins theory that goes as folows: Suttering is a mechnical phenomenon, somehow vocal cords lockup due to very fine breathing synchronizations failing to kick in. Vocal cord tensions are the root cause ... Skumar, your posts are interesting. Does Hollins also believe that stress-sensitive vocal cords cause stuttering? I thought that only Dr Martin Schwartz's NCS held this view?