My Stuttering Is Me

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Re: Another great paper from Dr. Silverman; one question.

From: Ellen-Marie Silverman
Date: 08 Oct 2010
Time: 13:00:55 -0500
Remote Name: 64.12.116.145

Comments

Ross, nice to hear from you again. Thank you for your kind words once more and for a chance to dialogue a bit! /// I'm glad to see you are giving thought to how an slp might encourage clients to see themselves more as they really are (we all need help with that!). I think the place to start is for the clinician to undertake the same quest as an ongoing activity, to peel back and peer under the layers of conditioned being accumulated during childhood, the teen years, and early adulthood through exposure to family, religious, societal, cultural, and generational values by influential individuals and the media to discover who they really are. As we as clinicians engage in the process and increasingly recognize our own humanity, we begin relating to those around us differently. We see others as people, like us, and less as things, such as "clients." I did not know him personally, but I think the late Charles Van Riper may have had this ability to relate to clients as if they were people and not things, which would be a reason for the warmth so many felt toward him (I personally knew some people who worked successfully with him to manage their stuttering problems.) /// Relatedly, I think putting the focus of our exchanges with clients more and more on "What is Right with You" instead doing what we often do by responding almost exclusively to their problems generates a more wholesome clinical environment that, quite naturally, elevates the self-esteem of those involved. That, then, is expressed in all circumstances, because thought, including self-perception, leads to action. /// I have written quite a bit about clinicians learning to partner rather than rescue clients in the resource book published last year, MIND MATTERS. SETTING THE STAGE FOR SATISFYING CLINICAN SERVICE. A PERSONAL ESSAY (now available as a Kindle e-book). I invite you to take a look at it. /// So, in responding to your very fine question, I want to emphasize that our presence, our being, is the starting point to providing the service to our clients that satisfyies them as well as us. Best Wishes, Ellen-Marie Silverman


Last changed: 10/08/10