Telling and Hearing Stories

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Recovery definition revisited

From: Gunars K. Neiders, Psy.D.
Date: 15 Oct 2012
Time: 13:28:15 -0500
Remote Name: 98.247.240.81

Comments

I found it helpful in my journey to define two types of fluency: spontaneous fluency-the fluency that one has when one talks, is fluent but is not even aware of it let alone fearing on-coming possible disfluencies; and managed fluency--where one approximates the fluency by using various techniques especially proprioceptive and muscle tension feedback and one keeps the speech forward moving. One goal of therapy is to increase the instances and duration of spontaneous fluency and failing to do that resorts to managed fluency instead of relapsing into struggling speech. Wendell Johnson and I see no evil in Iowa bounces, easy repetitions. But the main goal of therapy is to change one's attitudes: to accept one-self unconditionally whether one stutters or not; not to demand perfect speech; to understand that one might well have to work on the self-talk via modern psychological methods; and not to awfulize or urgentize about ones speech. Perfectionism about speech and the need to be accepted by everyone are true enemies of living a full and enjoyable life. Recovery? I rather think of recovering...


Last changed: 10/22/12