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From: Woody Starkweather
Date: 10/17/01
Time: 6:53:01 AM
Remote Name: 155.247.229.177
Hi Everyone:
Your question gets right at the essence of therapy for stuttering. Since stuttering typically begins during childhood, I think it is quite natural that avoidance of some kind is the early response. Actually, it seems that frustration is the first reaction, then avoidance of one form or another. Sometimes, it is just struggle behavior, which grows directly out of the frustration. Sometimes it is the use of tricks to help get words out. And sometimes it is trying to hide the stuttering, but these reactions are all basically avoidance behavior. The problem is that avoidance, as a strategy, tends to grow the fear that motivates it. So, the more the child avoids (struggles, hides), the more afraid they become and this leads to additional avoidance. Once it gets started, it creates itself. Stuttering is a disorder that tends to grow itself, once planted.
As clinicians, we need to reverse the process. Confrontation of the feared event is a highly effective method for reducing fear. It is the opposite of avoidance, and it kills fear and improves communication just as surely as weedkiller makes your flowers grow better. But it isn't easy to gain a client's trust to the point where they will start the confrontation process, doing the thing they are afraid of. This is what takes time, and it is what makes therapy a kind of art form. But once the person starts to get some fear reduction as a result of confrontation, they typically start to really enjoy it.
Woody