From: Gunars
Date: 10/5/00
Time: 7:53:23 PM
Remote Name: 12.13.226.14
Michael and Scott,
Thank you for addressing an important topic in stuttering therapy, namely, counseling.
Scott, in the spirit of your excellent Course Syllabus -- Fall, 2000 (Reference: http://www.mankato.msus.edu/dept/comdis/kuster/StutteringCourseSyllabi/yarusssyllabus.html) where you propose learning "through the process of asking and answering questions", I asked myself: "What is the role of counseling in stuttering therapy?"
Is counseling the peeling away of the emotional problems, the feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame, until the stuttering therapy becomes a matter of solving a practical problem of unlearning the struggle and forcing that the client does when he stutters?
Does counseling include the working through the emotional overreaction (that is performing cognitive, emotive, and in vivo desensitization) to a speech situation so that correctly privately practiced techniques can be successfully translated to speaking performance in public?
Is one of the goals of counseling to inspire hope and overcome defeatist attitudes about the success of stuttering therapy?
Isn't one of the first and, probably, most important goals of counseling the teaching of unconditional self acceptance, of acceptance of oneself, whether one stutters or not, even as the client diligently keeps working to become a more "flowing" speaker and better communicator?
Isn't a desired goal of counseling to help a client gain self-discipline as well as insight in the process of therapy. We need self-discipline to carry out our private and public assignments: to change the habits of avoiding, forcing, and struggling. The insight to be gained is that no matter how good the therapist is, no matter how good an attitude the client has, any real change in speech will evolve only as a result of publicly carried out assignments, and any real change in emotional reaction will come only through working both cognitively on the attitudes and carrying out in vivo desensitization exercises?
In the end, isn't counseling a means to change the clients self-talk from: "Oh, my gosh! Here is this speech situation in which I know I just will not be able to cope, which I just know I will not be able to manage" to: "Hmm! Another interesting challenge. I know I can cope with it, although, maybe, not perfectly. I know I can stay in touch with my feelings. I know I can stay in the moment and try various techniques which I learned. And above all, even if I lose control, the stuttering, no matter how bad, will not wipe me off the earth. J I know I will manage to survive! And I will live quite happily, even though I might flub, from time to time, my speech goals."???
What do you think?
Gunars
p.s. I really found your course syllabus outstanding. Starting with the desensitization of the budding SLPs toward pseudo stuttering is the only way to go. Otherwise, how can a therapist de-awfulize and de-catastrophize the clients feelings about stuttering if she, herself, feels that stuttering is shameful.