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Stuttering- More Than Feelings

March 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Many people who stutter believe that they stutter because of their feelings about themselves and being too concerned with what other people think of them. It cannot be denied that people who stutter often stutter more when they are concerned over how they present themselves or how their speech sounds to others. However, it is important to differentiate between what causes stuttering and what increases stuttering. Making this difference is essential for understanding what stuttering is and for the self-esteem of many people who are sincerely trying to not let their stuttering affect their lives.

I want to make this point, because I have heard many people who stutter say that if they could make themselves care less about stuttering, they would not stutter. The fact that they are still stuttering seems to them to be a failure in their ability to cope emotionally. This is not the case. A person can be the most centered, emotionally intelligent and socially well-adjusted person and still stutter. This is true, because stuttering is a condition that involves so much more than the person’s feelings.

Today researchers are coming up with more and more evidence that the place where speech is created, the brain, is the source of stuttering. Recently new genetic research lead by Dennis Drayna at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health, has shown that at least some people (thought to be 9% of the people who stutter) have a gene mutation, not found in fluent speakers. It turns out that these particular genes are responsible for the production of two enzymes necessary for a metabolic process required by all cells, but that especially affect a group of cells in the brain responsible for speech. Other researchers studying other families have also found indications of mutations in genes of those members of the family who stutter. The relationship of these genes to speaking is not yet clear. However, what we are seeing is that stuttering isn’t simply a question of how the person feels.

For those people who have tried to stop stuttering by changing only their attitude and feelings, it is important to know that stuttering is not only about what you feel inside. Advertising stuttering is good and helpful. Learning to be self-accepting of yourself whether or not you stutter is essential for your personal wellbeing. Being disappointment in yourself and thinking you have failed because you still stutter is self-defeating and misplaced.

Filed Under: clients, Emmotions, nature of stuttering Tagged With: , , , ,

The Connection Between Speech Anxiety and Stuttering

January 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Most people who stutter believe that anxiety causes stuttering or increases stuttering severity. There is an obvious link between anxiety and stuttering, but, as with most aspects of the condition of stuttering, there is more to it than meets the eye.

Many years ago, I presented a research study at The Third International Congress of Fluency Disorders in which I asked both normally fluent and stuttering speakers to develop language in whole word units instead of syllables while producing only a voice or while talking silently (as if the mute button had been turned on). I then asked them to describe the feeling. Both groups answered that they felt choked, tense, and uncomfortable. The people who stutter said that this way of speaking reminded them of stuttering. The fluent speakers reported that this is not at all the way they speak.

This experiment lends support to what I have observed so often in the clinic. Processing speech in the way that people who stutter do, not only makes speech stuttered, it also leads to feelings of tension and anxiety. People tend to believe that anxiety causes stuttering, or stuttering causes anxiety. However, both anxiety and stuttering are the natural outcomes of faulty speech processing. Over time these two conditions become so linked in the speaker’s mind that any feeling of anxiety will exacerbate faulty processing and, therefore, increase stuttering. In turn, a stuttering incident increases anxiety. This leads to increased faulty processing and, therefore, increased stuttering.

Many people believe that the goal of therapy for stuttering is to reduce anxiety. They believe that if the person who stutters could just relax the stuttering would disappear. While it is true that giving up the effort of trying to get words out fluently, may lead to more automatic processing and thus reduce both stuttering and anxiety, it is asking the impossible to try to feel relaxed when you are still trying to control speech.

One of the big frustrations that people who stutter often encounter is being told to relax so that they won’t stutter. Trying to follow this impossible, though seemingly good advice, only increases anxiety.  I have treated yoga experts and people who meditate daily. They are great at relaxing, but the second they try to control their words, relaxation evaporates.

When clients learn to produce speech automatically, without thinking about words and how to say them, the result is not only flowing speech, it is a feeling of comfort and relaxation. Trying to reduce anxiety may inadvertently lead to better speech processing, but there is a more direct approach. Learning to produce speech automatically and without control directly leads to a decrease in anxiety and stuttering.

Filed Under: controversy, nature of stuttering, speech control, therapy approach Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Fluctuations In Stuttering

January 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

An almost universal aspect of stuttering is that people who stutter don’t always stutter. There is a small number of people who do stutter more or less the same way and to the same degree whenever they talk. However, they are by far in the minority. Most of the people who I have met who stutter (in the thousands!) tell me that they stutter more when… The ending might refer to people, places, words or letters, eating and sleeping, or even the weather, but most often to “tension, pressure and anxiety.”

In an effort to speak fluently, people who stutter, their family and friends are busy trying to find out what outside factors make them stutter. Their hope is to eliminate, change, or learn how to deal with these factors. The emphasis is on external factors. This search is ineffectual because the external factor is not the problem.

The role of external factors is that they may lead the speaker to use a more, or less, controlled process for speaking. It is the individual’s reaction to outside factors and the way their brain functions when these factors are present that actually causes the fluctuations of stuttered speech. Therefore, it is the individual’s reactions, not the catalyst leading to the reactions, that need to change.

Brain functions are not carved in stone. They fluctuate for the better and worse as a result of experience, learning, practice, self-talk and imagination. When an activity has been done in a certain way over and over again, it becomes automatic and consequently more efficient and less subject to influence by outside circumstances.

Taking control over normally automatic processes will always have a negative effect. We see this when we give too much thought to our body movements when we walk or dance. Controlled action makes us clumsier and less flowing in our movement. The same thing happens with our speech.

Stuttering comes and goes according to the degree that controlled processes function to produce speech. By learning how to produce speech automatically, and by accepting the need to speak without control, people who stutter can develop a stable system that generates fluent speech.

Filed Under: clients, dynamic stuttering therapy, general information, nature of stuttering, speech control, therapy approach Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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