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From:
Date: 10 Oct 2004
Time: 00:35:36 -0500
Remote Name: 195.92.67.70
Hello again, Brandi. Your question is interesting: '...do you believe that techniques aimed at reducing disfluency are actually telling clients that it is not okay to stutter?' As I said in my short answer - I don't know. But I suspect there is some truth in this, at least for some individuals. In my own case (although I have no memory of my own therapy) I'm fairly sure that having to make a special visit to a therapist to 'fix my problem' would have added weight to my perception that it *was* a problem, and having to learn 'techniques' would have had the same effect of reinforcing my negative self-image. ('I'm a freak - I'm a joke - I can't speak properly - I'm not normal - I need special treatment - I don't fit in - People laugh at me...) All that happy stuff! Anxiety was at the root of the problem (at least in my case). Whatever caused my stutter in the first place, once it became established it was fed by a huge lake of fear and anxiety. The more I stuttered, the more anxious I became. The more anxious I became, the more I stuttered. So the main key to 'curing' my stutter was to drain the anxiety-lake. That's where therapy may perhaps be in a Catch-22 situation, because in drawing attention to 'Stuttering As A Problem' (which it needs to do if it's to find successful techniques) - it can have the unfortunate side-effect of opening up a new tributary. Yet another river of anxiety that serves to deepen and enlarge the lake, not drain it. I don't know if the above applies to *all* people who stutter - but I'm pretty sure it describes my own experience. (John)