[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Gunars Neiders
Date: 11 Oct 2007
Time: 15:40:07 -0500
Remote Name: 67.171.0.68
Chavi, you have asked some very good and difficult questions. But for every question, there is an answer, if and only if, you treat every client like an individual and you start build a therapeutic alliance based on reality and not wishful thinking…………Let us tackle one question at a time. What would I say to a teenager who cannot accept that he or she stutters?......This is about the hardest question in the book. :-) I would take him or her out on a walk and show him or her the different ways and severities how a person can stutter. I would do this interacting with salespeople, my associates, etc. As a therapist, if I would not be a person who stutters, I would learn to stutter, and using Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) shame attacking exercises learn how to pseudo stutter in may ways, but at the most I would have among the many ways of stuttering 99% fluent speech. I would demonstrate in words and in deeds two things: a) stuttering is not a black and white situation, but has many gradations and somewhere as one gets more fluent and forward moving in the speech, the listener no longer classifies you as a “stutterer” and b) that no amount of stuttering is “awful” and unbearable. I would tell the client that he or she has been born speaking wise “left-handed” i.e. has some disfluencies and it is his or her choice whether they want to extend the effort to learn to “eat with the right hand” (i.e. to be able to talk almost without any disfluencies). It is interesting to note in Europe they eat with fork in the left hand. It is considered bad social graces to eat with the right hand, except among the lower classes. I would really learn REBT to be able to help the teenager accept themselves unconditionally whether they stutter or not. Another real thing that is going against you is that the teenager really has a deficiency in Sensory Perception, they do not know how bad they really stutter. The brain is gracious enough to let us ignore our mistakes. But before I would handle the client facing the truth, I would make sure that either you become competent at counseling such as REBT or Cognitive Behavioral Counseling or you hook him or her up with a psychologist or counselor who will be able to walk them through the shock of understanding that even though they sound worse than they think they sound, it is not awful and it is to a large degree alterable. If one accepts stuttering one can change it. You can’t put the dressing on a wound if you hide it behind your back. Thus, there is no chance of healing it. I have more to say, but I need to get to work on my dissertation…….What kept me motivated and gave me hope? The fact that I could talk fluently or nearly so when I was alone. I understood there was nothing wrong with me physically, that I only had to find somebody who could help me to get my head on straight. I really understood that any improvement in fluency, emotions about stuttering, and self-talk would pay dividends, so I kept on chipping away at it……………..Undoubtedly stuttering helped me to become the person who I am today. Stuttering gave the tools to live in a self-actualizing way, namely REBT. I like who I am. But stuttering *in the past* caused me also heartaches. Tears. Disappointments. The reason why I went back to school is so that fewer people would have to hurt as much as I did. I think my dissertation will contribute significantly to the field. It will not be the only answer, but in my humble opinion the most effective and efficient answer. I truly believe that. But Drs. Walt Manning and David Shapiro have also managed to do well. As has lay person John C. Harrison. Would I have turned out better would I have had a more fulfilling , had not I stuttered? This is an academic question, to which we will never know the answer. But I sure could have done without some of the hurt. :-)