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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 10/17/00
Time: 4:22:11 PM
Remote Name: 157.182.12.51
Dear Ubaldo,
Your question is a hard one. Should you recycle through the Hollins program? Should you purchase a speech aid device? I honestly do not think there is a clear answer to your question. You asked for advice from all of us. If everyone were to respond, I'm sure there would be contradictions. But here are my thoughts.
Did you find the Hollins Fluency System to your liking? In other words, do you like striving for speech free of stuttering, even if your speech pattern sounds more or less unnatural and feels more or less artificial. If so, then I think you might find it useful to try the program again.
If you don't like to monitor and might prefer a more fluent form of your stuttering, then you might want to consider a stuttering modification approach to therapy. More and more clinicians are getting back to this traditional approach that was perhaps best perfected by Charles Van Riper. One big difference in this approach is that you will spend far less effort focusing on everything you say and more effort studying, intercepting, and changing your stutters than you did in the Hollins fluency shaping program.
Should you purchase a speech aid? Others will certainly disagree, but I would advise you to try to achieve and maintain fluency without one. If that fails, repeatedly, then you might wish to pursue such an aid.
In any case, regardless of what approach to further therapy you take, I think you might benefit from a more comprehensive maintenance program that will help you retain the gains that you are capable of making. Sometimes the plus of becoming fluent quickly in an intensive program like the Hollins program becomes a minus in terms of maintaining the gains once the program is over. Ultimately, recovering from severe stuttering involves some very basic changes in the way you live day to day. Starting or joining a stuttering self-help group might provide some of the motivation to keep monitoring, practice your targets, etc.
I hope this helps.
Ken