Ouroboros
01-10-2011, 07:00 PM
-- I want to start by saying that my approach at explaining how I stopped stuttering, and not JUST stuttering, but also learned to tame my "self image reaction" in every speaking situation involves a blend of psychology, new agey science, spirituality, and a dash of science. If you don't agree with any of these viewpoints, than please don't read this for you will probably be offended.--
I started ever since I was 6, and have stuttered until just recently (I am now 20). I have been through all of the issues us stutterers face, being picked on, teased, humiliated, forced to see my self esteem torn to bits in front of people, you name it. Feeling inferior to fluent people, feeling inferior even to my own life, feeling worthless, hopeless, depressed, suicidal, the whole package. I went to several speech therapist, a psychologist, tried medication, drugs, alcohol, everything. If there's one thing I learned as a stutterer, we are all desperate to seek a way out of this disorder. Which is why I decided to take the risk of posting this method of how I stopped stuttering, because I knew that if there was one type of person who would take this advice into consideration, it would be my fellow stutterer.
-The Stutter-
The stutter itself truly is a phenomenon, a beautiful example of how the human psyche works. It is because us stutters don't have a condition that handicaps us FROM being part of society, but just makes us handicapped IN society. Think about that for a second. We feel like handicapped victims forced to participate in a nightmare of a society, where we will only make fools of ourselves until we come back to the comfort of our own being. However, even when we are alone, we are then preoccupied with thoughts of self shame, self hatred, profound sorrow, and depression. We literally Don't want to be ourselves anymore This is exactly the problem!
How did our stutter begin? The story is the same, "I just stuttered when I talked" is the usual answer. That there already is an affirmation that you indeed are a stutterer. However, if you think about it from a perspective of a non stutterer, here's what probably happened.
You, as a young child who's mind was traveling faster than the speed of light, literally. Had such enthusiasm and passion for life in your head that it couldn't fit on the way out of your mouth in a sense, and your body simply wasn't able to relax and coordinate itself slowly and gracefully, resulting in a choppy set of words. Think of people like Jay leno or other talk show hosts or fast talkers, they talk fast and stutter A LOT, but they aren't stutters and don't think to themselves as stutterers.
This NOW is the event which separates a stutter from a non stutter, the reaction. Let's say, the child spoke to a non judgmental person, the listener would probably react to him with a thought of "Oh wow, this kid's all riled up and hyper active! He talks so fast and enthusiastic". Without the immediate direct criticism, the child doesn't see a problem with how he speaks, which then as he/she ages, his body learns to coordinate his "mind to mouth mechanism"
It's different for the child who becomes a stutterer though. Now to those who say its a psychological, psychological, whateverlogical problem, I'm sorry, but you're lying to yourself. You are lying to yourself and just want to blame other abstract concepts you don't even know for your problem. The biggest obstacle for a stutterer to except, yet the first catalyst he/she needs to begin curing their problem, yes, curing it, is to accept that it is YOUR fault for stuttering. I know what you're thinking right now, seeing all these images of the times your were humiliated in front of people for not being able to say your name, being forced to remain in the situation around those people, just waiting for that beautiful second you had to yourself where you could cry. Feeling like you're amongst a crowd of vultures waiting for them to pick on your pretentious corpse. Just dreading that people would leave you alone and not talk to you. That dark, dense, sickening, and controlling ball of negative energy which churns all the emotions you have gathered about your stuttering, getting you angry and making you think "HOW IS IT MY FAULT! WHY ME!" Just hear my out my loved one, for I know your pain.
The stutter child begins with the same scenario as the non stutterer child, a lack of mind to mouth coordination. However, this is where environment takes a role. The child talks to the person, which usually is a critical parent or friend figure in their life, who criticism the child for their lack of fluency. (In my case it was my father who would shout at me and tell me to stop stuttering) As soon as the child hears this, he/she realizes that there is a problem with the way he/she communicates, and the child's mind automatically registers "Their is a problem with the way I talk, when I talk I feel this way (The way the critical listener made the child feel), therefore, I do not like talking, wish to talk, and I SHOULDN'T like how I talk"
And now begins the snowball....
The child's lack of faith and self love for the way he/she communicates precedes not the moment before the child opens his/her mouth, but before the child CONSIDERS to open his/her mouth. Think about that. The moment the stutterer gains the desire to speak, at that point until the child opens his/her mouth, there is this sort of hesitation, lack of faith, churning up of negative emotions, the feeling as if though it was a task, when speaking should be effortless. Instead the very same passion for receiving an answer from asking, is turned against the stutterer, and put into how much the stutter doesn't want to speak. And if you listen to that voice of common sense in you, who do you think would produce a more fluent sentence, one who doesn't like to speak because he/she thinks their words aren't worth anything (which the stutterer taught himself and reinforced and AFFIRMED to himself EVERY SINGLE TIME they stuttered) or someone who isn't afraid of the outcome of their words (because they never saw a problem with how they spoke). That's a freebie question right there. It just makes total sense! Even if the non stutter stuttered, he wouldn't PERCEIVE it as a stutter, because he never saw anything wrong with it. He didn't REACT to his stutter with such magnitude, instead, he brushed it off, probably even thought it was a silly mistake.
For the stutterer, every un fluent sentence becomes a "GOD DAMMIT I ING STUTTERED AGAIN!" Even if it was a normal dis fluency. It then turns into a vicious perpetual cycle of being self critical to ourselves every time we "mess up", which continuously gives truth to the self image of "I am a stutterer". but if you think about it, what is that self image really? What is a stutterer? Ask a million different people, you will get a million different perceptions on it. However, ask a million stutterers what a stutterer is, and you will get a million different perceptions as well, however with one cryptic similarity, they all have an underlying negative connotation, which is a lack of "liking who we are" See, every time you think I am a stutterer, you are saying, "I don't like who I am". Ask a non stutterer what a stutterer is, he doesn't think negatively of himself, in fact he may be puzzled or unable to comprehend the word. However, a stutterer hears stutterer, and thinks "The worthless piece of shit I am, known as me" What exactly got us into this mess? Our ego.
I started ever since I was 6, and have stuttered until just recently (I am now 20). I have been through all of the issues us stutterers face, being picked on, teased, humiliated, forced to see my self esteem torn to bits in front of people, you name it. Feeling inferior to fluent people, feeling inferior even to my own life, feeling worthless, hopeless, depressed, suicidal, the whole package. I went to several speech therapist, a psychologist, tried medication, drugs, alcohol, everything. If there's one thing I learned as a stutterer, we are all desperate to seek a way out of this disorder. Which is why I decided to take the risk of posting this method of how I stopped stuttering, because I knew that if there was one type of person who would take this advice into consideration, it would be my fellow stutterer.
-The Stutter-
The stutter itself truly is a phenomenon, a beautiful example of how the human psyche works. It is because us stutters don't have a condition that handicaps us FROM being part of society, but just makes us handicapped IN society. Think about that for a second. We feel like handicapped victims forced to participate in a nightmare of a society, where we will only make fools of ourselves until we come back to the comfort of our own being. However, even when we are alone, we are then preoccupied with thoughts of self shame, self hatred, profound sorrow, and depression. We literally Don't want to be ourselves anymore This is exactly the problem!
How did our stutter begin? The story is the same, "I just stuttered when I talked" is the usual answer. That there already is an affirmation that you indeed are a stutterer. However, if you think about it from a perspective of a non stutterer, here's what probably happened.
You, as a young child who's mind was traveling faster than the speed of light, literally. Had such enthusiasm and passion for life in your head that it couldn't fit on the way out of your mouth in a sense, and your body simply wasn't able to relax and coordinate itself slowly and gracefully, resulting in a choppy set of words. Think of people like Jay leno or other talk show hosts or fast talkers, they talk fast and stutter A LOT, but they aren't stutters and don't think to themselves as stutterers.
This NOW is the event which separates a stutter from a non stutter, the reaction. Let's say, the child spoke to a non judgmental person, the listener would probably react to him with a thought of "Oh wow, this kid's all riled up and hyper active! He talks so fast and enthusiastic". Without the immediate direct criticism, the child doesn't see a problem with how he speaks, which then as he/she ages, his body learns to coordinate his "mind to mouth mechanism"
It's different for the child who becomes a stutterer though. Now to those who say its a psychological, psychological, whateverlogical problem, I'm sorry, but you're lying to yourself. You are lying to yourself and just want to blame other abstract concepts you don't even know for your problem. The biggest obstacle for a stutterer to except, yet the first catalyst he/she needs to begin curing their problem, yes, curing it, is to accept that it is YOUR fault for stuttering. I know what you're thinking right now, seeing all these images of the times your were humiliated in front of people for not being able to say your name, being forced to remain in the situation around those people, just waiting for that beautiful second you had to yourself where you could cry. Feeling like you're amongst a crowd of vultures waiting for them to pick on your pretentious corpse. Just dreading that people would leave you alone and not talk to you. That dark, dense, sickening, and controlling ball of negative energy which churns all the emotions you have gathered about your stuttering, getting you angry and making you think "HOW IS IT MY FAULT! WHY ME!" Just hear my out my loved one, for I know your pain.
The stutter child begins with the same scenario as the non stutterer child, a lack of mind to mouth coordination. However, this is where environment takes a role. The child talks to the person, which usually is a critical parent or friend figure in their life, who criticism the child for their lack of fluency. (In my case it was my father who would shout at me and tell me to stop stuttering) As soon as the child hears this, he/she realizes that there is a problem with the way he/she communicates, and the child's mind automatically registers "Their is a problem with the way I talk, when I talk I feel this way (The way the critical listener made the child feel), therefore, I do not like talking, wish to talk, and I SHOULDN'T like how I talk"
And now begins the snowball....
The child's lack of faith and self love for the way he/she communicates precedes not the moment before the child opens his/her mouth, but before the child CONSIDERS to open his/her mouth. Think about that. The moment the stutterer gains the desire to speak, at that point until the child opens his/her mouth, there is this sort of hesitation, lack of faith, churning up of negative emotions, the feeling as if though it was a task, when speaking should be effortless. Instead the very same passion for receiving an answer from asking, is turned against the stutterer, and put into how much the stutter doesn't want to speak. And if you listen to that voice of common sense in you, who do you think would produce a more fluent sentence, one who doesn't like to speak because he/she thinks their words aren't worth anything (which the stutterer taught himself and reinforced and AFFIRMED to himself EVERY SINGLE TIME they stuttered) or someone who isn't afraid of the outcome of their words (because they never saw a problem with how they spoke). That's a freebie question right there. It just makes total sense! Even if the non stutter stuttered, he wouldn't PERCEIVE it as a stutter, because he never saw anything wrong with it. He didn't REACT to his stutter with such magnitude, instead, he brushed it off, probably even thought it was a silly mistake.
For the stutterer, every un fluent sentence becomes a "GOD DAMMIT I ING STUTTERED AGAIN!" Even if it was a normal dis fluency. It then turns into a vicious perpetual cycle of being self critical to ourselves every time we "mess up", which continuously gives truth to the self image of "I am a stutterer". but if you think about it, what is that self image really? What is a stutterer? Ask a million different people, you will get a million different perceptions on it. However, ask a million stutterers what a stutterer is, and you will get a million different perceptions as well, however with one cryptic similarity, they all have an underlying negative connotation, which is a lack of "liking who we are" See, every time you think I am a stutterer, you are saying, "I don't like who I am". Ask a non stutterer what a stutterer is, he doesn't think negatively of himself, in fact he may be puzzled or unable to comprehend the word. However, a stutterer hears stutterer, and thinks "The worthless piece of shit I am, known as me" What exactly got us into this mess? Our ego.