Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

The Problem With Current Speech Therapy Techniques

The way I describe the mental process of stuttering is that your brain puts stumbling blocks or "walls" at certain key words you are preparing to say like you would punctuation in a sentence. The commas go here, here and here and I am going to stutter on this "p," this "g," and that "sh."

Like many if not most stutterers my parents took me to a number of speech therapists to try to get help. I recently did an Internet search to see if the same inefficient - if not downright counterproductive - tactics were being used today as they were when I was a child and regrettably they are. Let's look at some of the basic tenets of speech therapy as it pertains to stuttering and the their ramifications.

Slow Down

The idea behind the "slow down" recommendation is that the impediment is a product of the stutterer being exited and trying to say too much too fast. In fact, the human brain is cable of allowing us to talk at approximately 150 words per minute, listen and comprehend at around 450 words per minute and accumulate thoughts and words for communication many times faster even than that.

Slowing down actually gives you much better and many more opportunities to stutter because you don't build up a head of steam to pass a wall before it can form or break through it with sheer momentum.

Think About What You are Going to Say

"Take a deep breath and think very hard about what it is that you are going to say." In case you had not already erected the walls in anticipation of what you were going to try to communicate now is the perfect time to do so.

From the mentality of a non-stutterer this makes perfect sense. If you breathe deeply, talk slowly, and think about what you say before you speak even a hysterical disaster victim can regain their ability to communicate. Why wouldn't the same be true for stutterers?

Because we are stutterers. It is like telling a blind man if you turn up the lights, put on glasses and squint you should be able to read the newspaper. Stuttering is a physical condition, not a behavioral or attitudinal disorder. The way to keep stuttering at bay is not to adopt the tactics that work for non-stutterers but to understand why and when you stutter and make a "work-around" that will make it seem as though you don't stutter at all. Like a blind woman who memorizes every inch and obstacle of her house so that, to an unaware observer, she does not appear blind at all.