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From: Alan Badmington (email:alan@highfieldstile.fsnet.co.uk)
Date: 10/22/01
Time: 2:59:35 PM
Remote Name: 195.92.194.12
Hi Stephan,
I, too, have leaned heavily upon John Harrison's Hexagon concept during my personal recovery from stuttering.
Quite unwittingly, my insistence upon living as full a life as possible (with the aid of an Edinburgh Masker - which I wore for more than 20 years), laid the foundation for the immense gains that I have attained during recent times.
The fact that I joined a programme that deals with stuttering from a holistic perspective, and teaches (inter alia) a technique to overcome the debilitating speech block, has allowed me to totally dismantle the restrictive psychological framework that supported my stutter for more than 50 years.
Implementation of John Harrison's hexagon principles (by constantly broadening my comfort zones) enabled me to expand my hitherto narrow self image to accommodate all the things I previously believed I could not fulfil.
I had so many negative beliefs, negative perceptions, negative emotions and negative practices to eradicate. I knew that I had to create a fluency system in which my speech behaviours, as well as emotions, perceptions, beliefs, intentions and psychological responses, all interactively supported each other.
I began placing myself in situations where I did things I would not have previously attempted. I knew I had to face my fears; I needed to challenge the negative beliefs and feelings that I had developed (in many cases unconciously)during more than half a century of stuttering.
It was uncomfortable doing something that I had always avoided, but that was the purpose of the exercise. As John Harrison says, "One's ability to tolerate short periods of discomfort is the key to change".
I enjoyed reading your paper and hope to make your future acquaintance.
Kindest regards
Alan Badmington