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From: Mike
Date: 10/8/02
Time: 7:32:54 AM
Remote Name: 142.166.253.156
Deanne,
That was the point of the whole story....You won't stutter-if you don't think about stuttering. To paraphrase Van Riper, "Stuttering is what we do when we try not to stutter."
Amongst the comments above, Alan has stated his belief in positive thinking. That's true. We stutterers are far too hard on ourselves...when we make a minor mistake, we magnify it into something more than it was. We might speak fluently 90-95% of the day yet, at day's end, we remember only our failures at speaking. My speech really began to improve when I made it a practice to NOT think negative. When entering a situation where I expected to stutter, I would force my mind to think of other things--the change in my pocket, that evening's TV schedule, last night's football game, anything to replace the negative thoughts with positive ones. At the end of every day, I recounted the positive things I had done that day, the accomplishments I had attained. Once I began focussing on the positive rather than the negative, I became more fluent. And, of course, more fluency created even more fluency.
Stuttering is not about fluency -- that's only a symptom -- so many other things play a part: our health, self-image, surroundings, relationships, everything! Disfluency is only the "tip of the iceberg."
Mike