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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 10/22/03
Time: 8:05:16 AM
Remote Name: 157.182.13.3
Dear Pastor Matney,
Lynne Shields has provided some excellent sources for both psychogenic and neurogenic stuttering. It is certainly possible that you are suffering from the former (but unlikely the latter). However, in my opinion, it is also likely that you stutter in the more traditional sense, that is without any clear pyschogenic or neurogenic cause.
Obviously, the onset of your stuttering is atypical. Most stuttering begins in childhood, but I have seen numerous cases in which stuttering did not begin--or occur with sufficient frequency to be noticed particularly--until adulthood. In these cases, even those that seemed to be coincident with periods of significantly elevated stress or pressure in life, the problems and treatment has been very similar to the more typical stuttering with childhood origins.
What you say of your temporary success with some therapies leads me to suspect that you are approaching therapy (understandably of course) from the perspective of finding something to return you to your previous fluent self. This sort of mind set often results in using the various techniques learned "TO TRY NOT TO STUTTER" rather than "TO TRY TO TALK IN A NEW WAY." Often, this makes all the difference. If you could get hold of "Advice to Those Who Stutter" from the Stuttering Foundation of America, you will see numerous authors recommend facing, advertising, and otherwise not avoiding the stuttering. This often results in a new mind set in which previous approaches that provided only temporary benefit become useful tools to assist you in speaking in a more controlled manner IN SPITE OF THE STUTTERING THAT MAY STILL OCCUR.
I would suggest you try these approaches first, if possible with a competent speech-language pathologist who specializes in stuttering. From the little you wrote, I would suspect this might well be successful. However, if this approach is not successful, perhaps you should follow Lynne's line of reasoning and obtain an evaluation from a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist. I would say that a neurological examination would probably be your least beneficial course, unless you have exhausted all other possibilities.
Another perspective. I hope it helps.
Ken