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From: Vivian Sisskin
Date: 06 Oct 2009
Time: 19:53:43 -0500
Remote Name: 96.231.199.60
Charlton, I love sports analogies even though I am not any good at sports! They are meaningful in the area of stuttering because in many ways we are trying to change a motor behavior (speech). From my perspective, there are two ways in which sports analogies might help you problem solve to reduce struggle. The first relates to compensation. If you have a sore arm, and you want to avoid the hurt, you might hit the golf ball in a way that reinforces an inefficient way of getting the ball into the hole. The analogy for stuttering would be holding back on onsets for fear of showing what you might consider to be “ugly stuttering”. The second relates to habit. Once a motor pattern is practiced, it often becomes established. And if you consider that anything that you do that results in release from a moment of stuttering is incredibly reinforcing, it’s easy to see that the habit of holding back can become a habit. But just for fun, let’s say that your difficulty in moving through a word is maintained NOT by old habit, but by fear of trying something different that MAY not end up being more comfortable. If relaxation and slowing down has helped you achieve more fluency in the past, I am not surprised that you would try them again. But those things tend to induce fluency for the moment and may not be addressing the core problem: The desire to suppress stuttering. Suppose you did some paradoxical assignments, and instead of trying to slow down and relax (advice that has been around for years without good outcomes), let go and do the very thing you fear the most…. struggle?! You might find that going ahead and giving yourself permission to do the thing you fear the most results in taking the wind out of the struggle. You won't have to TRY to move through the word anymore.