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From: Ellen-Marie Silverman
Date: 19 Oct 2008
Time: 12:06:00 -0500
Remote Name: 205.188.116.8
Hello, Pam. Yes, our humanity . . . We who have stuttering problems are human just like everyone else, and the process of change applied to our stuttering problems is like the process of change applied to any other personal problem we may wish to address in that older, undesirable mind-behavior sets replace newer,preferred ones, especially when we begin the process. Should that give us grief and reason to berate ourselves and lead us to quit concluding we have failed or the program isn't any good or the therapist isn't helpful? You know the answers: "No," "No," "No," and "No." I think most would answer the same way. Now what do we do when we revert to our old ways? As the lyricist for a song wrote, "Pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start all over again," or as Hasidic Jews are known to say, "The tzaddik (righteous person) falls seven times and rises seven times." and as we say in common parlance, "If you fall off a horse, get right back on again." So, we resume applying our new mind-behavior sets. With effort and consistency, the new thought-behavior set becomes familiar and strong, and the old ones, weak. And we relapse less and less. Key to the process of strengthening the new while weakening the old is to be kind to ourselves when we relapse. We remind ourselves how courageous and wise we have been making the change we already have and encourage ourselves to keep on keeping on because eventually, as we do, the odds are will be communicating more and more as we wish. >>> I'm so glad you raised this issue for discussion, Pam, because many times this matter can be a "make-or-break" element of therapy, as it can be for weight reduction programs, etc. When we accept these relapse as inevitable, especially when starting a program of change, we won't falsely interpret reverting to old ways to mean "I failed." "I can't do it." As it has been said, "No one ever became overweight by eating a slice of cake. We become overweight by eating slice after slice after slice." As we see the times when we revert to old patterns of stuttering for what they are, ie., old patterns, we can resume doing what we need to do to strengthen the new patterns we have chosen to cultivate. Best Wishes, Pam. Ellen-Marie