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From: Orlin Baev
Date: 15 Oct 2007
Time: 02:08:21 -0500
Remote Name: 87.120.206.34
Of course it is so! I think the therapeutic approach should be parallel. From one hand pure psychological work – desensitizing, gaining self confidence and assertiveness, and from another hand – fluency shaping. My experience shows the best approach is the integrative therapy. But still – fluency shaping in many stuttering cases is uncertain undertaking and the most important part of the therapy is the psychological work. And stuttering only helps for gaining internal locus of control, high self esteem and braveness if one uses it as a instrument for inner self grow. Of course, each stutterer dreams of becoming fluent speaker and influencing orator… In my case – I am psychologist and psychotherapist – I have overcome most of the emotional concealed part of the iceberg – shame, fear, guilt. When I see my client for very first time, I am saying to him: “Hello, my name is Orlin Baev, Cognitive psychologist and psychotherapist. I am stutterer. You should know that exactly because of my stuttering I have become good psychologist and now I can help you. My stuttering will also take out on the surface many of your resistances, psychological defense mechanisms and we will work on them. My stuttering will work for you as it has been working for me!” The client says: “Oh, do not worry, I do not care for your stuttering…” And the therapy starts with analyses and so on and so on. And stuttering is the least thing that matters as a matter of fact. What matters besides ones knowledge and psychotherapy training, is the charisma, the ability to enter in the patient’s shoes, to resonate with him and you to have the inner strength to take him out of the chasm of his problems. And maintaining such strong inner center, which certainly goes with internal locus of control, requires a lot of discipline in the daily life. Sometimes, when I loose this inner strength, no matter what I do with the patient, it does not work, because the formal psychotherapy is only addition to the actual transfer between two souls, two energies – this one of the therapist and of the client. Anyway – even feeling in tip top shape, I still need certain level of fluency. My stuttering is usually in the middle – not very mild and not very strong – in order to do my busyness, I have to maintain it there or diminish it. When I lead the client through creative imagination verbally, he gets into alpha or even theta brain waves – and I am responsible for the influence – if I stutter strongly, I can create some unconscious patterns in the person. So, then I practice the technique of prolongation on the stressed vowel. As a matter of fact, it is rhetoric technique and has hypnotic effect by itself. About my works – I am preparing book: “Integral and transpersonal psychology and psychotherapy”, where in one chapter I am introducing new therapeutic approach. The book is in Bulgarian, but I will translate it for sure. Special part will be therapeutic approach for stuttering.Regarding the fluency, I use “verbal Thai chi chuan”, i.e. extremely slow speech pattern – not only slight prolongation, but really slow speech with full concentration of mind and presence of the “Self”. Such speech pattern must create new verbal praxis on neural level. Be healthy! Greetings: Orlin