[ Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Walt Manning
Date: 13 Oct 2008
Time: 12:46:03 -0500
Remote Name: 141.225.97.59
Hello Kate, I’m answering your questions several days late as I have been off in California for several days presenting workshop with a colleague. When I was younger my first choice of a career would have been to be an airline pilot for American Airlines or something similar. But like many things, I (or others) ruled out that type of thing. I might have been a decent psychologist or counselor, or possibly in criminal justice/law enforcement. One of my problems – if it can be called that – is that I’m interested in lots of things and could have ended up doing may things depending on where I was and how I met at a particular time. But it turned out the way it did and I’m happy for that. I suppose the main target of my treatment early on was becoming desensitized about stuttering and becoming informed about what stuttering was and what it wasn’t. My clinicians helped me APPROACH the problem rather than run from it. They helped me to decrease my avoidance of the reality as well as the possibility of stuttering. That helped me to “stay in the moment” and begin to vary and change my stuttering so I was less apt to do the same old, reflexive type of stuttering. I think my negative views began to change as I experienced more success changing not only my fluency but my avoidance of situations where I might stutter. I realized that I wasn’t the problem but that stuttering was the problem so my clinicians helped me “put it on the workbench” and begin re-arranging parts of it. Another thing that helped was lots of practice doing the things that I was afraid of and wasn’t at all sure that I could do - especially telephone calls and public speaking. I wasn’t terribly good at public speaking but, to my surprise, I found – like many of my colleagues who have and continue to stutter some – that it is possible to be pretty good at it and to have a wonderful time as you connect with the audience. In the past I never would have imagined that I could do that but that’s what happened. Thanks for your thoughtful questions.