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From: Gary J. Rentschler
Date: 05 Oct 2011
Time: 13:38:22 -0500
Remote Name: 165.190.57.240
Thanks for the compliment Barb! Treating covert stuttering is all about "the head game".. counseling the client to overcome his/her fears of stuttering and helping them work through their avoidances. I appreciate that this is sometimes more difficult than traditional speech therapy where we work to modify actual speaking behaviors. But what the covert stuttering client often needs are reliable means of speaking so that the can trust their speech will "come out" when they want to talk. It makes little sense to the causal observer that someone with no visible signs of disfluency could be so absorbed and fearful of stuttering... Experience finds that the person who stutters covertly goes to astonishing lengths not to show their stuttering. As a result, the handicapping effects of their problem are equally as strong as those who stutter openly.