My Experiences With Cluttering
http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/cahn_mnsu_edu/
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About the presenter: Joseph Dewey is a business analyst. He graduated in Statistics, and has worked for years implementing software packages and championing process improvement in manufacturing companies. Joseph was diagnosed with cluttering and has made remarkable personal progress in improving his speech. It's perhaps because of his analytical background that he's been able to map out in great detail what it is like to experience cluttering. He is the founder of the first online group for cluttering and is very passionate about learning more information about the relatively unknown field of cluttering. |
My Experiences with Cluttering
by Joseph Dewey
from Utah, USA
Cluttering is sometimes compared to stuttering, and extreme cases of both can sound very similar.
An example that Dr. St. Louis gives of both is:
Stuttering: "I want to go to the sssssssssstore and I don't have muh-muh- muh-muh-money."
In my opinion, the key to differentiating stuttering and cluttering is the root disfluency. Stuttering is rooted in the disfluency of sound repetitions. Cluttering is rooted in the disfluencies of word and phrase repetitions, revisions and interjections.
I'm a pure clutterer. I have no stuttering component. I have no other related or unrelated disorders. Cluttering describes me in every way. My cluttering is inseparable from my personality. I feel that I'm still cluttering even when my speech is perfectly fluent. My speech is an outward reflection of the cluttering that rages in my head. I see cluttering as a personality set with a high likelihood of resulting in disrupted speech.
(Requires QUICKTIME player).
I started speaking at a normal age, but my speech has always been "different." My mom sought professional advice but didn't want to "make a big deal" about my speech, so she never brought it up. I'm glad she didn't, because I think early therapy would have made it worse for me. There was almost no information available on cluttering at that time, and I almost certainly would have been misdiagnosed and probably would have become very self conscious of my speech.
My parents separated when I was about 10, and I think that impacted me. I've heard that divorce can trigger speech problems, and I think that it probably accelerated mine. When I was younger I was very loud and extroverted. As I grew up, I withdrew because of my problems expressing myself through speech. I come across as an introvert in a lot of ways, but inside I still feel like an extrovert.
Like most clutterers, I didn't realize I had a problem with my speech, until it was pointed out to me. I was 26.
In college, the dean of my department pulled me into his office, and said, "Joseph, you're a really smart person, but I've noticed that you have a hard time expressing yourself. I've got a friend in the speech department, and if you're open to talking to him, I think this would pay off for you in your career."
At that point, it didn't occur to me that I might have a speech problem. I'd always wanted to be a good public speaker (probably as a subconscious need to deal with my speech problem), and so I went to the speech department, thinking I'd learn about how to be more confident in my speech.
After several days of testing, the speech-language pathologists said they were diagnosing me with cluttering. I was surprised because I had never heard of cluttering. She then played a sample of my speech they had recorded during the testing.
Now, most people don't like the sound of their voice, but imagine how horrified I was to not only hear my voice, but also to have it pointed out that I had an undeniable speech problem. I was shocked. I was shaken. I had never realized my speech was different and now I had proof, shoved in my face. I had a speech disorder.
I felt alone for much of my life. That all changed for me when I read Deso Weiss's book. I realized for the first time that there are other people out there just like me. This realization has helped me connect with people in ways that I had never thought possible.
After learning about cluttering, I spent about two years in speech therapy.
A student at Hunter College, CUNY interviewed me in 2003. The entire interview was posted with permission on the Stuttering Home Page and is also linked in the Cluttering Yahoo Group page of links. It is included here as part of this paper to provide the reader with additional information about my background and what cluttering is like for me.
As a child, his mother was very adamant about specific syntax. He gave an apologizing example, where she demanded that he repeat verbatim "I'm sorry that I didn't take out the trash and that I threw the cat out the window." Even if the apology consisted the overall gist, thus missing a few words (e.g. "I'm sorry that I didn't take out the trash and that I threw the cat out."), he was still required to repeat the sentence as she stated it. Such demands may have caused much stress and anxiety on J.D. being able to use proper planning for speech output that he reportedly was not able to go through the developmental process of learning to pre-plan speech/language. When asked what if feel like to clutter, his response went as follows: "It feels like 1) about twenty thoughts explode on my mind all at once, and I need to express them all, 2) that when I'm trying to make a point, that I just remembered something that I as supposed to say, so the person can understand, and I need to interrupt myself to say something that I should have said before, and 3) that I need to constantly revise the sentences that I'm working on, to get it out right."
He mentioned a speech he gave recently, where he froze for approximately thirty seconds and was not able to say a word. As he mapped out his thought process later, he counted sixteen separate thoughts he was trying to keep in mind, though he normally tries to hold five to eight thoughts at once while speaking. He believes that such 'banks' could be a part of cluttering. He hypothesizes that fluent speakers hold only about two to three thoughts in their minds, before they simply "shut down, and do something about it." Although with J.D., there is no limit of thoughts, nothing is done about it, and therefore, he either freezes or begins to express all the thoughts at once. Therefore, one of his self-remediation techniques is to simply focus on one central theme as he speaks. He used to avoid speaking with people who are 'power figures' or had status, talking on the phone, and also avoided speaking with people who would have difficulties understanding his speech, such as those who are hard of hearing, or those who do not understand English well (i.e. native speakers of another language). He prefers e-mail as the main mode of communicating/exchanging ideas, since he is able to revise easily. He stated that he probably would not be as functional without e-mail/computer access.
The interview process consisted of questions sent to him via email. J.D. acknowledged an interesting aspect of his cluttering and organization process. He mentioned how the majority of people would have most likely read and answered the questions one at a time, perhaps starting from easiest to most difficult, then proofreading and turning in the answers. However, he felt as if he was answering the questions by jumping from one to another, rewording and revising, changing answers, etc., simultaneously. In addition, although clutterers don't exhibit escape or avoidance behaviors as stutterers do, he stated how at times when he becomes overwhelmed with the myriad of thoughts in his head, the conversational partner will usually notice his frustration, and move on to another topic. Such acts by other people, although perhaps done with good intentions, are not to his liking.
Since reading disabilities are corresponding symptoms of a clutterer, J.D. graduated from college by basically skimming textbooks, not exactly reading them and imbibing all the necessary information. He has excelled vocationally, with database development, and has voiced how such a career would be ideal for clutterers, since they learn organizational skills at a high level.
He was asked how his relationships with other people have been affected by his cluttering. To which he replied: "I really have a hard time telling stories - I avoid telling stories, because I can't get them out right - I lack the organization to tell what happened yesterday, etc. My wife has a hard time with that because I never talk about how my day went at work - I don't remember a sequence of events of what happened at work - but I spend time mulling over certain events or conversations that I think are significant."
While conversing, he prefers to ask questions rather than answer them, since questions are easier for him to produce fluently. Because of his preference to ask rather than answer, he has come across to many as cold and `interviewing.' He has also been mocked about his "deer in the headlights" reaction when asked a question, and tends to avoid those individuals who are less than understanding about his reaction, and contribute unnecessary opinions about his speech.
Keeping all this in mind, J.D. did not realize he cluttered until the age of twenty-six, when a college teacher brought to his attention that he had a speech disorder. This also coincides with one of the obligatory symptoms of cluttering; the "lack of (complete) awareness of the problem" (Daly, 1985). He then received speech therapy for about a year, which he did not find to be helpful.
His suggestions to me for therapy/remediation ideas included the following: integrating elements and pointers used in public speaking training and thespian voice lessons, allowing the client to either talk freely or read aloud out of picture books, and learning how to become comfortable with talking to other individuals. He believes that reducing speaking rate should not be the focus of therapy. Although clutterers do exhibit tachylalia, it should be kept in mind that it is a symptom, and not the cause of cluttering. Focusing on delivery of speech (which includes prosody and suprasegmentals), rather than speech rate would aid the clutterer to obtain fluent speech production. Another technique he suggested included the videotaping of clutterer while speaking. This would allow the client to observe his/her own production of speech, as well as note on the appropriate/inappropriate characteristics of their speech. The client would then be videotaped once more trying new techniques for improvement. This allows the clutterer to become self-aware of his/her speech, try new approaches, and have the Speech-Language Pathologist as a guide. While conducting research for educational and personal purposes, I was quite surprised to find the lack of current research on this disorder. Even looking through databases, it was difficult to obtain a journal article published within the last five years containing helpful information on cluttering. Research must be imperative in order for future clinicians to be able to make educated and competent decisions about therapy techniques, should we encounter a client who clutters later on in our careers. This interview has allowed me to gain much more insight on the disorder than by simply reading the few pages in the textbook, as well as the required article about cluttering. The impact this disorder has on an individual's life varies, though I am grateful to have come across J.D., who has helped me become aware of the caliber of this disorder, and the overall lack of awareness most people have. Like stuttering, future research on cluttering should focus on possible etiologies and proven therapy techniques to allow the client to become a fluent speaker. The increase of awareness of cluttering should also be evident in schools, thus allowing the teachers to notice the characteristics easily, refer to an SLP, and have the child not fall through the cracks (since, reading and writing disabilities, and language difficulties are symptoms/characteristics of cluttering). J.D. has made some great strides to improve his speech and increase cluttering awareness. SLP's should equally aware that there are two forms of fluency disorders, and that cluttering, though not as prevalent, should not be ignored.
References
Daly, D.A. (1986). The clutterer. In K. O. St. Louis (Ed.), The atypical stutterer: Principles and practices of rehabilitation (pp. 155-192). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Weiss, D.A. (1964). Cluttering. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Speech therapy taught me many techniques (some worked better than others) and gave me a solid foundation for improving my speech.
Therapies that didn't work for me
- Telling me to relax: Cluttering sounds a lot like nervous speech, and so it seems natural to tell the clutterer to just relax. However, clutterers aren't generally nervous when they speak. Their speech merely follows the same patterns as nervous speech.
- Fixing the problem without therapy: The lure of just telling someone to "improve your speech" can be very great. However, this is very dangerous because you risk completely turning off the clutterer from ever improving.
Therapies that helped occasionally
- Slowing speech down: This has been heralded as the miracle cure for cluttering. However, for me, it seems a lot like taking an aspirin when your hand has just been cut off. It relieves the pain, but it doesn't fix the problem. Having said that, I think all clutterers should learn to talk slowly. But, once learned, clutterers should move quickly to other therapy techniques.
- Focus on your speech: Cluttering is different than stuttering in that focus on speech will result in speech temporarily improving. If you ask a person who stutters to focus on their speech, their speech will often get worse. So, for clutterers, a logical therapy might be to focus on their speech all of the time. For people like me, who are initially unaware of the problem, this is easier said than done.
- Fix the other speech problems first: This is common advice to speech language pathologists, and I believe that it comes only from a lack of available knowledge about how to work with cluttering clients.
Therapies that worked well for me or that I think would have been helpful
- Self monitoring: This means different things to different people. To me, this means listening to my disfluencies as I speak. I'm not doing anything to correct my disfluencies. I'm just listening to what comes out of my mouth as I speak, and noticing the disfluencies.
- Having a single point: This is frequently used in public speaking, and basically means that everything you say is focused on one and only one main idea.
- Thirty second speeches: In regular conversation, most talking is encapsulated into 30 second blurbs about one topic. After 30 seconds, another person in the conversation gives their blurb, and so on and so forth, around the room. Learning to give a 30 second blurb about one topic is an excellent therapy that is very useful.
- Thinking about the listener as you speak: This might seem like simple advice, but it is something that is very hard for a clutterer to do, and yields huge benefits to improving cluttered speech.
- Infuse an underlying music to speech: Clutterers speak in a modified monotone. For me, it is very hard for me to vary loudness, pitch, or other characteristics of my speech. Working on infusing an underlying music into my speech has been extremely helpful to me, and has been more achievable than directly working on other attributes such as loudness and pitch.
- Identifying mazes in speech: Mazing is the most identifiable cluttering behavior. For me, this is the only cluttering behavior I've been able to pinpoint when I'm doing it. Like I said earlier, I'm cluttering all of the time, so identifying mazes helps me not only in my speech but in thought patterns as well. I can notice my disfluencies as I speak, but I haven't yet been able to identify anything that makes them worse or better.
- Parents improving their speech as a model for their children: Every parent that I've suggested this to has said, "but it's my child with the problem." I'm convinced that the only way to get a child excited about improving their speech is for a parent to be excited about improving their speech. This is an extremely positive therapy that can foster an atmosphere of togetherness and excitement in a family.
A few years ago, I made a renewed effort to fix my speech, and I've learned much more about improving cluttered speech. The knowledge I've gained has changed my life.
Now most people would describe my speech as normal, but I've still got a ways to go to achieve my goal of perfect fluency.
Thanks to:
- Kenneth St. Louis and Florence Myers--For holding the torch for the last twenty years.
- Deso Weiss--For writing the book that changed my life
- David Daly--For a story that inspired me
- Future cluttering researchers--for helping the thousands of people out there who clutter
References:
"Cluttering," St. Louis, K. O. (1996) http://www.stutteringhelp.org/Speech-Language%20Pathologists/Cluttering/82.aspx
Daly, D. A. (1996). The Source for Stuttering and Cluttering. East Moline, IL: LinguiSystems. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0760601089/
Myers, F. L. & St. Louis, K. O. (1992). Cluttering: A clinical perspective. Kibworth, Great Britain: Far Communications. (Reissued in 1996 by Singular Press, San Diego, California.) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1565935438/
Weiss, D. (1964). Cluttering. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0006BMD0I/
