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From: Ellen-Marie Silverman
Date: 10/22/03
Time: 8:30:14 AM
Remote Name: 172.167.76.206
Hello, Lorissa,
Thank you for your interest in my paper.
You ask if I would advise stutterers to meditate as a treatment technique. Those who wish wish to calm their minds and strengthen their mind/body/heart connection ---- Yes. By the time someone who stutterers reaches adulthood, as well as someone who does not, examining personal beliefs and learning how to live more authentically and peacefully is helpful. Meditation practice may have a beneficial effect on the motor aspects of stuttering in time, but, well practiced, certainly will influence a noticeable and desirable effect on interpersonal behavior. I do not advocate meditation practice as an alternative to speech therapy.
You asked whether I regret I did not face my stuttering sooner in life. From my current perspective, I could not have. Given my childhood, teenage years, and early adult experiences, but, most especially, my childhood, survival was my greatest challenge. I simply accepted what I was learning --- that I had nothing to say that was worthwhile and/or safe to express and that, if I had, I could not say it anyway --- and became selectively mute as a survival technique. Until, in my mid-30's, when I placed myself in an enviromment where I was safely able to emerge from my cocoon, my stuttering was not there for me to work with. As I established my personal identity, which included expressing my beliefs and values, I realized stuttering was something I did. Then I was dealt with it. Dealing with it, did not mean hiding it. I was so thrilled and thankful to unmistakeably be in the process of becoming the individual I always thought I was but was too inhibited to express, I let myself become myself, stuttering, and all. I had been hiding for so long that even stuttering was acceptable, if that was me. I did realize quickly, of course, that to communicate well with others, I needed to learn to stutter so that I did not skew communication times in such a way that others focused on my stuttering more than on me and what I was saying.
For me, given my hellish background, stuttering itself is not a problem. By surviving to be who I am, I can accept all that I am. And, since I had lived in such a repressive manner due to both the actions toward me by others and my own responses to them, I will not let stuttering stop me from doing whatever I want to do. Stuttering, for me, is just an occasional small bump in the road of life I encounter from time to time. I hit the bumps and keep going, holding onto the steering wheel, keeping my eyes focused on the horizon.
Ellen-Marie Silverman