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From: Jeff Shames
Date: 16 Oct 2008
Time: 05:45:51 -0500
Remote Name: 64.12.117.196
Hi Sandra- Thank you for this thought-provoking article about "fluency." (I appreciate the use of quote marks!) When I first discovered the self-help stuttering world, one of the benefits was learning that there could be alternative goals in therapy other than "perfect fluency." I decided that I was not willing to do the work that would be necessary to achieve this goal; what was more reasonable for me was stuttering modification. In time, my therapy became working on a film about my journey with stuttering, that eventually became "Spit It Out." It became natural to bring up stuttering in the context of the film. I had pens made up, which I distributed at my job. All of this was empowering, yet had nothing to do with "fluency." I went back to graduate school to become a social worker, and now have a job in which much speaking is required. I am now a more comfortable speaker, but still sometimes stutter. I sometimes use slowed speech or voluntary stuttering as a way to reduce the severity of my speech blocks, as well as my natural tendency to speed up while talking. I appreciated reading about fluent silent pauses. This is such a complicated area. I think yet again of Joseph Sheehan's concept of the actual speech producton being only the tip of the iceberg. Regards, Jeff