Watching People Stutter and Their Courage
HI,
I haven't written in awhile, doc school keeps me busy, however I wanted to report my experiences with the intensive stuttering clinic I helped supervise a few weeks back. We had a group of people who stutter (PWS) come and face their fears of speaking, perceptions of stuttering and judgments (their own and others), and put them in experiential situations in an effort to help desensitize them to stuttering. As I was helping my clinicians perform therapy and come up with ideas for treatment throughout the 8 days (10 hour per days of direct therapy for our clients) I found myself giving them instructions to think about staying in the moment, looking at thoughts, during activities experiences and not try and mask negative thoughts, however grasp those moments and create functional, workable goals, along with teaching that the outcome is something we can't control or worry about. The word control came up a lot with the clients and the clinicians...control...
I wanted to talk about control here for little bit, as it pertains to stuttering and connects with ACT. It seems common that people who stutter have this continued sense, even on the verge of obsession with needing control. Control of their lives, grades in school, other people's perceptions of them, and the desire to find control of their speech. This is really no different than any other anxiety disorder, is it? What my clinicians and I came to is that control may equal the right to choose our reactions to situations that life throws at us (i.e., control = the right to choose). This theme was established early on in the therapy sessions with our clients and passed on throughout the week in individual and group sessions. By the end of the week the clients were developed a better sense of connecting with their thought about stuttering and about what they "can" and maybe "can't" control. One client even decided to order food at a drive threw (which they had never done before due to fear of stuttering). The therapist presented this activity in this way: "Can we drive up to the drive through, even if we don't order can we sit there and just experience it? It is up to you?" The client agreed and did order! Very exciting for all involved!
Just some thoughts on "control" with people who stutter.
Have a great day!
Scott
"If You Wanna Make The World, A Better Place, Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change." ---Michael Jackson ---
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Comments
Effective control
When we try to control the context, our mind does a good job anticipating, planning and choosing. We chose what to do depending on the consequences that we foresee.
90 % of our mind work is dedicated to plan and to decide what to do and to check whether it is being well done, in order to correct the course of action if otherwise. But our minds carries out only 10 % of our behavior, most of our behaviors are automatic behavior. For example, our mind gives the order of walking; but the body actions to walk are automatic behaviors, the same with speaking.
Human beings have demonstrated to be effective controlling the context; but when our minds try to control consciously and voluntarily an automatic behaviour, failure is assured. The speech control is an attempt to control an automatic behaviour and the failure is guaranteed.
Scott, I think that your suggestion of considering the control as the flexibility of choosing our course of action in the context puts the control where it is effective.
Walking and control....
Jose,
Great to hear from you and thanks for the power point. I read it over and loved it! Did you get my email thanking you (it was in Spanish, well the best I could do with a translator).
The idea that thinking about every word and our minds being wired to anticipate, plan, and choose if so true and yet "fluent" people don't spend the same energy and cognitive processing on the planning and more so the anticipation of words. I see it like walking, if you consciously thought about walking, thought about each muscle used to move your feet, ankles, thighs, and legs along with the gate of your walk, I guarantee your walk will change and not be as natural. So, that being said, though the defusion of thoughts attached to non useful actions like "negative anticipation of blocks", a person who stutters may begin to loose the need to place as much cognitive thought on the "production" of the message and focus more on the mood and theme the of message or context, rather than production.
Great conversations! Thanks Jose and Pete!
Have a great day!
Scott
"If there was nothing wrong there'd be nothing right"
---Shine Down---
You bring up a good point
You bring up a good point when you speak of control. As someone who stutters and who is learning ACT therapy, perhaps I can shed a little light on this. Imagine having to cafefully consider what you are going to say and how you are going to say it everytime you open your mouth. Imagine that you have to insure that every word can be articulated clearly before you say a word or you might be hit with an embarrassing block which could cause both you and your listener discomfort. Even after all of this need to control what you say, you can still be blind-sided either when the listener poses a question to you and you know you will block on the answer or you block on a word that you normally do not block on. Either way, your worst fears are realized.
This is what stutterers go through countless times every day. The fear is reinforced every time there is a block and the need to control the situation increases with every block. It is important to remember that there is a strong anxiety component to stuttering. For example, I stutter much less around women than I do men and I stutter much less around peers than I do superiors. I'm not sure if that is common, but it would make sense if that is the case.
Anyway, I appreciate the work you are doing and I will look forward to your future research on this topic.
Pete
Control the speech
Hi Pete
As normally fluent person, I don’t choose every word I want to say and I don’t worry if a word is going to be fluently articulated or not. I have the idea and the words come automatically to my mouth, its articulation is completely automatic.
Stutterers also articulate every word fluently many times; when they read alone, for instance. Choosing the concrete word and its articulation are automatic behaviors, triggered by a mind order. When we foresee every word in order to avoid block, the probability of becoming blocked increases exponentially. If we attempt to control consciously our pronunciation, the block is very close.
I have found very different patterns in the quantity of stuttering in front of different persons. For instance, someone may stutter with his parents and another one is completely fluid, other stutters much more with girls and another is much more fluid with them. The answer to the question: “In general, in front of whom do you hate or fear much more to stutter?” may give you a clue to the reasons of these differences.
Jose Antonio
Thanks Pete
Pete,
HI! Thanks for your comment! As a fellow person who stutters myself, and a PhD student researching stuttering I agree with your descriptions of what a person who stutters goes through. Very much about fears, not only the fear of what we think about our own speech, also fear of external perceptions of our stuttering. I've struggled with this idea of judgment for so many years and recently, through ACT and wonderful supportive people in a lab group I'm privileged to be apart of, have come face to face with acceptance and looking a these thoughts of judgment.
As far as your speech being better with women than men, not sure if there is much research on that, however there is a lot of research on fluency breaking down with superiors as opposed to peers (different thoughts and comfort levels here). Stuttering is a situational anxiety concern, not necessarily a trait anxiety concern.
Stay in touch Pete! Thanks for taking your time to make a comment, I always appreciate people's thoughts.
Have a great day!
Scott
PS. Just started reading Kelly Wilson's new book "Mindfulness for 2" and have gotten so much from it as a clinician (speech pathologist) along with things I've already applied me as an individual. Great read so far and very inspiring... Thanks Kelly...
Scott
"If there was nothing wrong there'd be nothing right"
---Shine Down---