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From: Gunars Neiders
Date: 06 Oct 2007
Time: 14:53:27 -0500
Remote Name: 67.183.183.115
Dr. Shapiro.....William James divided people and their philosophies of life into two extremes of “tender-minded” and “tough-minded”. Of course, there are people who are all along the continuum. I believe that you are on the extreme of “tender-minded” (especially from your writings and our meeting at the San Diego SID-4 conference). I am on the other extreme, as evidenced by my my mentor being the late Albert Ellis. I also believe that we are exposed to both “tender-minded” and “tough minded” clients…. Woody Starkweather, another “tender-minded” person said, “There are many ways out from the forest (or thicket) of stuttering.” I agree….My “tough-minded” stance has helped me as your “tender-minded” stance has helped you…. My question for you is do you ever use “tough-minded” approaches with your clients?……Starting with the ABCS of stuttering, where A is affect; B is behavior; C is cognition and S is sensory perception (the S my addition to Eugene Cooper’s ABC. The stuttering literature is full of sensory perception exercises and discussion, but it never made it to the acronym):…..1) Do you ask your clients to learn to sharpen their S, “sensory perception”, by monitoring tension and proprioception (movement and position of sound forming muscles) so that they can in an anxiety producing situation learn to a) relax, for example, pursing their lips tightly or b) sharpen their proprioception sensing skills by lip synching and then introducing the sound?……2) Do you ever directly via self-talk try to change their A,*affect*? For example, when the client tells you that they were feeling disrespected because they stutter and hence felt ashamed that they stutter, discuss with them that they do not *need* to be loved, although all of us would *like* to be loved or at least accepted?......3) Do you address their C,*cognition or self-talk* system directly? By discussing that stuttering really cannot be *awful* except by arbitrary definition? Or using General Semantics argument that we all have thousands of characteristics and no one characteristic can make a global rating of us defining a person who stutters as being less valuable, let alone being worthless just because we stutter? That stuttering is something we do, not something we are?......4) Do you ever assign B, “behavior homework” send a client out in the “cold and cruel world” to do some voluntary-pseudo-stuttering, “easy onsets”, or “pullouts” so his or her brain can be rewired to convince him or her that slight disfluencies do not constitute a hurdle to communication and that he or she can introduce slight disfluencies on their own and not feel any anxiety, shame or guilt about having them? And, moreover, that it is possible *with practice* to replace struggling blocks with mild disfluencies?