postr/StutterMarch 26, 2020

How Do You Unlearn How To Stutter?

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Content

How Do You Unlearn How To Stutter? When it comes to dealing with your stutter, I look at it in two different ways. 1) Fighting the stutter. Layering techniques on top of it such as fluency shaping and stuttering modification. This is where you counter it directly and deal with it. 2) Removing the block that is causing the stutter. ​ By block I mean emotional block. Not a speech block. Let me explain. I've been stuttering from the age of 5. It's never been that much of a problem because I've still functioned in school and I was able to make friends. And in my teenage years, the stutter 90% went away. I only stuttered on a word here and there. But my speech was smooth flowing almost all the time. Now in my mid 20's, my stutter is really bad. And it's impacted me on a functional level because I now find it hard to do anything that requires talking. Whether its asking for directions or asking a simple question to someone. This occurred during my late teenage years. Someone had mentioned to me that my stutter might become a problem in professional settings such as job interviews and presentations. Ever since they mentioned that, I started to think about my stutter and I saw it as a problem after that point. The irony is that it wasn't a problem so far. It never stopped me from talking. But it became a problem after I started to see it as one. After that point, I developed some patterns. These patterns reinforced themselves through repetition. Every time I was required to talk, I thought of my stutter. I thought '' Oh no will my stutter kick in now and prevent me from talking? ''. So any time at all I was required to talk, I immediately thought of my stutter. So instead of just talking like I've always done, I now instantly thought of my stutter and made it float up there like a comic book thought bubble while I was talking. Letting it linger there and fly around. Whereas before that, I didn't even think of the stutter. I just....talked. Engaged in the conversation. I was oblivious to whether or not I stuttered. So you could say this '' comic book thought bubble of the stutter '' is a block that is restricting my natural speech function. If I didn't even think of this, I'd just talk. Ever since I started to view talking this way, my stutter has become severe. So the solution might look simple - Just get rid of the thought bubble, and unlearn all those patterns. But how? Once you have gotten into this habit, how do you unlearn it? Isn't this the classic pink elephant problem in psychology? If you tell someone to not think of a pink elephant, they're not going to think of anything else but one? Other than that, I have been finding some success with technique 1 which I mentioned above. I'm just wondering how technique 2 can be tackled.

Themes

Anticipation & AvoidanceEmotional ExperienceIdentity & DisabilitySpeech & Stuttering

Subthemes

Avoidance & SubstitutionHelplessness & AgencyIdentity & Self-PerceptionLoss of Control