Part 1 of my paper on stuttering for class project. please read

Part 1 of my paper on stuttering for class project. please read This self-direction project forced me to habitually monitor and analyze a negative behavior of my choice. Prior to being assigned this project, I had already been conducting my own self-change process, and this further reinforced my determination for change. Change is a very difficult practice, but sounds a face-melting melody in theory. I played this melody on repeat for quite some time until I had the realization that in order to get to where I ultimately wanted to be, I had to create my own song. The behavior that I confronted and continue to challenge is my avoidance and apprehension of speech due to a stutter. There are times where I may have an insightful remark to make in conversation, or a desire to approach another individual, but will not due to the fear of a possible stutter. In doing this I am holding myself back from reaching my full potential. The summer prior to this current fall semester, I began both therapy and speech therapy in an effort to produce that change that I had longed for and intensely desired. This self-prompted decision soon became a valuable choice as I began producing new beats, but still hadn’t yet been able to terminate the self-destructive tune that echoed throughout my mind. When I first entered the classroom and learned of this option as a semester long project, I immediately envisioned further change and self-development and without hesitation became my medley of choice. This type of self-therapy included ten intensive and self-challenging steps, as well as daily personal observations. Both therapeutic mechanisms are an attempt to change your core beliefs that have distorted your thoughts and ultimately produced the negative behavior. Behaviors can gain momentum and dominance through repetition of action. In an attempt to avoid the stutter, I would self-induce social isolation in order to situate myself in a position in which the anxiety and fear of the stutter would be almost non-existent. As I began avoiding speaking situations, the viscous cycle of social anxiety ensued. By selectively placing my-self in these environments, I was unconsciously associating the settings of avoidance as those of anxiety producing. In doing this, I was negatively reinforcing the isolative behavior and continuing the cycle, thus worsening the anxiety. By associating anxiety with speaking situations, I was also negatively reinforcing the stutter. In order to recondition my behavior I knew I had to face my fears or fear the continued self-destruction. In the observation portion of the self-direction project, I closely examined my anxiety levels, my fluency percentage, and the amount of times I avoided speech due to the fear of a possible stutter. The first few weeks I analyzed the criteria, anxiety levels were consistently at 2 or above (1-4 scale, 4 being the most severe). Since the anxiety was present, the avoidance of speech was too. In casual conversation with friends I would sound myself off and in essence become a wall flower. When I would speak, it would not be my true expression, as I feared if I vocalized my thoughts, and did stutter, my opinion would be deemed null and void due to the disfluency. Disfluency was another symptom of the higher levels of anxiety. My anxiety was due to feared speech, and as such my vocal folds were much tenser. My breathing patterns were not anxiety relieving, but actually anxiety inducing. Relaxing breathing results from diaphragmatic breathing, something I had not been doing. I was breathing with my chest, a style consistent with more stress and anxiety. As such, my vocal folds, which open and close as the air pushed out sounds, were not fully opening for me to speak, and blocks were occurring much more rapidly. This all culminated in the realization that if I can relieve the anxiety, I can increase my fluency, as well as my sociability. I began forcing myself to face these fears I had developed a negative illusion for. I began answering questions in class, a behavior I had always avoided. I had developed this false belief that I would be unable to speak fluent in class, and would fail in the spotlight. This became a core belief of mine and I inhibited speech in every one of my classes. I knew that if I wanted to break this habit, I mustn’t hide myself in class, but put myself out in the open for all to hear and judge. I then began answering questions in every one of my classes, and even asked questions in some. Asking questions puts you more in the spotlight, something I knew I needed practice in. After a few weeks of pervasive participation in class, my in class heart rate and total level of anxiety began to decrease. I had begun to feel more comfortable and confident in class and my professors made that known to me with positively reinforcing comments. The main anxiety inducing stimuli in the classroom were my peers, and until I had their reinforcement, I would not be able to feel completely at ease in the classroom. In my Drugs & Behavior class, I was the most vocal participant. I asked questions, as well as answered questions that drew classmate interest and attention. My peers were coming up to me after class in amaze, asking how I was so knowledgeable on the subject. This was the positive reinforcement I needed. In Counseling and Theory, I was the most vocal student from the start, as this subject was one that I had personal experience in. The class almost acted as therapy, as I was able to analyze other people who had dealt with similar issues as I had, allowing me to use personal experience to answer questions. It became an agent of self-expression that I carried into other classes, as well as social interactions. It helped continue the transformed thought processes that I had now possessed. A key aspect of this class that helped me to become more self-accepting was the fact that a portion of my classmates had similar issues that they revealed as well as analyzed in their projects. Anxiety affects people in a multitude of different ways. I had seen other individuals discuss their self-imprisoning attitudes that drew parallels to mine, showing me I am not alone in this world. Every individual goes through tough patches, but it how you overcome them, or not overcome them that reveal the type of person you are and will be. In this self-revealing process, I had obtained self-worth that I never thought I would ever acquire. In doing so, I began to respect my self and the path I had traveled, and will continue to travel. Everyone observes, judges, and criticizes them self on a daily basis, but being able to see this self-assessment visually reinforces more positive behaviors. When you are constantly noting negative actions you are exhibiting, it becomes a goal to turn those negative thoughts and behaviors into positive, more self-igniting actions. Even though, this project has ended, I will continue observing my thoughts, behaviors, and actions for continued self-development. I will still be attending speech therapy once a week, where I will be observing my in-session fluency as well as my social behaviors outside of therapy, similar to what I had done for this project. Out of class in speech therapy, I had a similar observational guide. Each session my speech pathologist tracks every time I block or click. A click is an attempt to kick start the speaking engine when you sense a block approaching, and is an avoidance technique. I began speech therapy around the same time as this class and during the first few sessions, I had at least 5 tallies in each column. In my most recent session, December 3rd I had only two clicks and no blocks, a theme that has been occurring in almost all of November. This shows reliability, as my observations have been becoming more positive in both speech therapy and my self-direction project. The other aspect of this project included ten thought provoking steps that helped dissect your negative behavior while surgically constructing new personal core beliefs of yourself. The part of this section that I deemed most helpful was labeling the cues and antecedents to the behavior. For me the antecedents and cues were intertwined. The antecedents were the anxiety inducing situations and include; self-introduction, repeating myself, unprompted questions, the spotlight, and approaching females. These antecedents also worked as cues to the anxiety, and the eventual induced stutter that follows, or at least I thought that follows. A uniformity of the cues was the presence of negative self-talk. I was the one holding myself back, as I had a voice telling me to avoid certain antecedents, claiming they were anxiety inducing and would only bring about fear, reinforcing the associated fear, or cues of each antecedent. A shared characteristic of most stutterers is the fear of stating your name when introducing yourself. The reason this is a uniformity among stutterers is that, a stutterer can sense when a stutter or a block is coming and as an avoidance strategy, he/she will change the word or the transition into the word to make it easier to get that desired expression out. But your name is something that cannot be substituted, and this causes increased anticipatory anxiety when you are in a situation where you know you will be forced to introduce yourself. The expected rate of speech is also increased as the other party expects you to state your name immediately following his/her introduction. But while this second party is giving their introduction, the stutterer is in a state of panic as he/she has this preconceived belief that he/she will be unable to state their name. This self-induced stress makes it much more difficult to state your name and becomes a conditioned false belief that you will be unable to state your name when introducing yourself. This antecedent of self-introduction cues the feared anxiety inducing behavior. Spotlight, repeating myself, and unprompted questions have similar cues. In all cases, it is the increased attention on my voice that cues the anxiety. In the spotlight, the light is on you and you can’t turn it off. When having to repeat yourself, the listener(s) becomes more focused on you, causing the spotlight effect, thus cueing anxiety. Likewise, unprompted questions place you in the spotlight, while also forcing you to speak almost immediately, something that is difficult for a stutterer. You are focused on not only the expression, but the mechanism of action, potentially limiting your expression due to the panic cued by the spotlight. Approaching females has always been anxiety inducing, but the fear had no evidence to support the claim. It was a preconceived belief that I would stutter upon initiation, and would destroy the seed before it had a chance to get planted. This was the first year I whole heartedly challenged that belief. I began initiating conversation in the class room, as well as outside the classroom. I began studying with a girl from my sociology class and our relationship grew past the classroom and it has given me much more confidence in myself. Action is the ultimate self-indication of the internalization of beliefs.