[ Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Reuben Schuff
Date: 14 Oct 2011
Time: 22:05:55 -0500
Remote Name: 75.177.152.127
Hi Caryn, the trouble I find growing in to adulthood as severe (and profound) person who stutters is that I can’t “fix” all the disfluencies and exist in the real world. I can practice my fluency techniques in the situations that are a low enough demand that my skills can meet the burden and produce fluency. But the world continues to be demanding as I work to improve my speech. I remember during my first years of undergraduate I tried so very hard to be as fluent as possible. I saw constant failure when the techniques I worked on in the clinic and at home did not work when you drag me in front of the whole class. So for me, working on communication rather than fluency isn’t really a choice, because I don’t always get to choose if I’m going to show disfluencies or not. I do get to make a choice about how I communicate whether stuttering or not. I can choose to stutter in a way that is less distracting, and less struggled. I have to do that to get through the day to day. The way I see it is that less disfluency comes from stuttering better, not from working hard to avoid showing stuttering. The long term goal is continuous, spontaneous, co-articulated, forward moving, enjoyable speech production, we might think of “fluency” as this. But in the day to day battle, fluency for its own sake doesn’t have true value for me. Thanks for your comment, was I able to answer you question? ~Reuben