I Have a Voice E-Book

Bob Bodenhamer

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 329

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Have you ever wondered why most people who block and stutter do not do so every time they speak? Now the puzzle has finally been solved by this outstanding new book which details a completely new approach to treating this debilitating condition. Bob Bodenhamer explains that this phenomenon results from the thinking (cognition) of the stutterer as he or she associates speaking with a lot of fear and anxiety about blocking. This book both explains the structure of blocking and provides the tools for gaining more fluency.

Leseprobe

I Have a Voice

How to Stop Stuttering

Bob G. Bodenhamer, DMin

Edited by Peter Young Foreword to the paperback edition by L. Michael Hall

Foreword by John C. Harrison

Contents

Title Page

Foreword to the paperback edition by Bob G. Bodenhamer and L. Michael Hall

Foreword by John C. Harrison

Introduction

Chapter One The Origins of Stuttering

Chapter Two Learning to Think Differently

Chapter Three Changing Points of View

Chapter Four Stories about Stuttering

Chapter Five Working with Stress

Chapter Six Techniques of Change

Appendix A Pioneers

Appendix B A case study by Linda Rounds with Bob G. Bodenhamer

How to contact the author

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index

Copyright

Foreword to the paperback edition

by Bob G. Bodenhamer and L. Michael Hall

Stuttering is in the shadows of public awareness and has been for years. But no more! Now there is a movie that is bringing it forth front and center. Sure, no one dies from stuttering, and it is not pervasive: only one percent of people stutter. Yet it is a malady that has not received a great deal of attention.

But no longer is it in the shadows. In November 2010, a movie brought stuttering to the world’s attention. The King’s Speech, a British historical drama directed by Tom Hooper and written by David Seidler made stuttering part of the public conversation. Moviegoers learned of the embarrassing pain that most People Who Stutter (PWS) suffer. But, even more than that, Lionel Logue, the speech trainer in the movie, brings into focus this shocking fact: stuttering is not about speech! It is about the “thinking” that is mostly unconscious and in “the back of the mind” of the PWS.

Positioned in the 1930s, the movie is about the young man who became the King of England just prior to the Second World War. It reveals the painful experiences that stuttering created for him. Logue, an Australian, who became the King’s speech trainer, used techniques to enable the King to gain more control of his stuttering in ways that were quite advanced for that time. Many things in this movie give support to the theories that you will find in the pages of this book.

So what did Logue do? Mainly and primarily he challenged the mental frames that created the stuttering. He knew that stuttering was not a problem of flawed neurology or genetics. He knew that it was a problem of the person’s attitudes and beliefs (mental frames) about stuttering. To create a good case of stuttering, there are certain belief frames a person has to adopt. The person has to believe such things as:

Mis-speaking is a terrible, horrible, and awful experience.Mis-speaking means “I’m inadequate as a person.”Mis-speaking means “No one will like me, want to be around me, value me, love me. They will laugh at me and reject me.”Mis-speaking means “I have to stop myself from stuttering and pay attention to each and every word that comes out of my mouth.”Mis-speaking means “It’s impossible. I can’t stop it. Trying to stop it only makes it worse. I must indeed be inadequate as a human being.”Mis-speaking means “I cannot have a career nor can I ever marry – who would want to marry me?”

Mis-speaking is terrifying because of the meanings given to it. It is the meanings given to stuttering that this book addresses. The King’s Speech serves as a support for the radical views contained within this work. Indeed, we believe that stuttering is a phobia of mis-speaking, with the painful feelings being located in the throat and other muscles that are involved in speaking. If you do not believe this, look up the diagnosis of a panic attack in the DSM-IV1. Does the description of a panic attack not describe exactly what you experience when you are having a speech block?

Logue knew this as he so passionately tries to get the King to understand that stuttering is about a specific behavior, speaking, and not about who he is. Logue as much says, “Bertie, your brain isn’t broken. It is doing exactly what you instruct it to do. The problem is your mental frames about stuttering!” The mental frames listed above are the frames that create the problem. And that is why when you change those frames, the stuttering behavior changes.

In the movie, The King’s Speech, you see Logue’s actions as he assists Bertie, the King, in changing his mental frames. We have identified six key mental frames that were driving Bertie’s stuttering:

1. Demanding-ness – Logue challenges his frames about demanding-ness. “Bertie, call me Lionel; here we are equals.” This changes the context (which changes meaning). Later he says, “Say it to me as a friend.”

2. Exceptions – We have found out that most every PWS has exceptions – places, times, and people – with whom and where they do not stutter. When do you not stutter? Do you stutter with your dog? Do you stutter when you are alone? Do you stutter when among trusted friends? In the movie, Logue asks, “Do you stutter when you think?” “No, of course not.” Ah, so here’s an exception! So you do know how to think or pray or talk to your dog without stuttering! So if there’s an exception, what is the difference that makes a difference in that exception? If you develop that, you’ll have developed a powerful first step to a resolution.

3. Singing – In the movie, Logue asks Bertie to sing it. Find a tune that you know well and whatever it is that you are trying to say, sing it. “Let the sounds flow,” Logue explains. This accepts the experience and changes one element in it. The King thinks it silly, ridiculous, and refuses to do it at first, but then he finds that he can move through the blocking by using a tune and putting the words to the tune. Singing creates both rhythm and air flow, both of which aid the PWS in speaking fluently.

4. Judgmentalism – It takes Logue a long time, but eventually the King talks about being mercilessly teased about his mis-speaking as a young boy. He was teased by his brother who put him down and who judged him because he stuttered. Important to the creation of negative meaning frames, Bertie’s father also judged him harshly without showing any mercy. This is deadly to the PWS. Logue comments:

“You don’t need to be afraid of the things you were afraid of at five. You are your own man now.”

What great frames! The past-is-the-past and what you feared as a five-year-old doesn’t need to be fearful now as a man. You once were controlled by others, now you are your own person. Breaking these judgment frames is critical. PWS have to master the childish fear that others will judge them for failing to be fluent.

And yet, even more important, is that they will have to master their own self-judgments.

The movie portrays this in a fascinating way. It occurs when Logue invites the King to read a famous text. When he does so, because he can hear himself, he is simultaneously judging himself. But when Logue turns up some music and plays it so loudly the King cannot hear himself reading, he reads the literature fluently, only he does not recognize it. And because he is so impatient, so self-critical, so non-accepting of the process, he storms out. However, he takes with him the recording that Logue has made and at a later time, late at night, he puts on the record and listens. He is amazed! The recording only recorded his voice and not the loud music – and he was reading fluently. Why? What was the difference? When he could not hear himself, he was unable to judge himself.

5. True to your own emotions – The movie portrays another process when Logue provokes the King to anger. He notices that when the King gets angry enough to curse, at that point he does not stutter. “Do you know the ‘F’word?” he asks. At another time he “reproves” and “commands” him regarding sitting in a chair, “You can’t sit there!” It frustrates and angers the King to be talked to that way by a commoner! Logue thus brings his ability to be fluent-while-cursing to his attention.

What’s going on here? Bertie is frustrated and angry enough to curse – and when he curses, he is fluent! When he curses, he moves beyond the frame of caring what people may think should he stutter. Bertie is true to his emotions – to himself. This leads to fluency, because, generally speaking, PWS dismiss their emotions. Indeed, they believe that to give themselves permission to feel their emotions will result somehow in their being hurt. This belief is rooted in Bertie’s childhood experiences with his brother and his father.

6. Focusing elsewhere – Finally there is the scene where Logue brings Bertie into his home. There is a model plane on the table in the process of being put together. When the King was a child he was not allowed to play with model planes, so Logue encourages him to play with it. As he becomes preoccupied and focuses on the plane, his speech gets more and more fluent. Ah, again, this is an experience that moves him outside of his usual frames of judgment, of disapproval, and of over-consciousness of speaking.

Due to his lack of knowledge of the yet-to-be-discovered field of cognitive psychology, Logue was limited in what he could do to help the King. The book you now have in your hand is filled with suggestions and patterns that will assist you in changing those negative meanings that have been driving your stuttering. Remember, as with the King, when you change the meanings about stuttering, the speaking changes. And that’s the potential we wish for you to unleash!

Notes:

1Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). (2000). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Our first article on stuttering was based on basic general semantic ideas. You can find it at: http://www.masteringstuttering.com/articles/how-to-create-a-good-dose-of-stuttering/.

Foreword

by John C. Harrison

One evening a while ago I received an email from my friend Professor Judith Kuster, who is webmaster for the Stuttering Home Page at Mankato State University.

“I have a challenging little puzzle for you,” she wrote. “See if you can solve it. Here are ten numbers. Can you tell me why they’re in the order they’re in? The numbers are 8549176320.”

There was no way I could pass up this challenge. I dropped everything and started wrestling with the puzzle. Now, I pride myself on having a mind that can grasp numbers, even if I can never get my checkbook to balance. I tried everything to make it work. I looked for hidden numerical sequences. I tried dividing numbers by other numbers. I tried multiplying them. I looked for exotic progressions. I wrestled with this conundrum on and off for the better part of two days. No luck. I just couldn’t get those numbers to unlock their secret.

Finally, in utter frustration, I wrote back to Judy. “I give up,” said. “I need to get a good night’s sleep. Tell me the answer.”

A little later came her reply. “They’re in alphabetical order.”

It was so simple. Why couldn’t I think of that?

I couldn’t think of it because I was stuck in a traditional way of approaching number puzzles. I had made certain unconscious assumptions about how the problem needed to be addressed. I did not know that I had limited my solutions. But the model within which I was working automatically ruled out non-numerical solutions.

This same habit of thinking “inside the box” explains why for the 80 years since the birth of speech pathology, most people have not been able to solve the mystery of stuttering. Our paradigm, or model, of stuttering has forced us to look at the problem through a set of filters that have masked out relevant information and issues. In short, for 80 years, stuttering has been incorrectly characterized, and as a result, most of us have been trying to solve the wrong problem.

I was lucky in that I never went through traditional speech therapy. So my vision was not colored by other people’s ideas of what stuttering was all about. Consequently, I ended up foraging on my own for answers, and by the age of 30, I had a different picture of stuttering than virtually anybody else I knew. I had also fully recovered, and this recovery has held for more than 35 years.

What I discovered during my recovery process was that my stuttering was not a speech problem per se, but a problem with my experience of communicating to others. That was why I never stuttered when I was alone. I was not communicating with anyone. I also learned that my stuttering not only involved my speech, but all of me, and that included my emotions, perceptions, beliefs, intentions, and physiological responses. These elements were joined together in a spider-like web of interconnections, where a change at any point caused a change at all the other points. In short, I had to look at stuttering as an interactive, dynamic, self-sustaining system. If I wanted to achieve a lasting recovery, I had to address, not just my speech, but the entire system.

Forces that shaped my thinking

An important part of this system was the way I thought about stuttering and about myself. Early in the recovery process, I began to question my way of seeing things. Was the world really such a threatening place, at least on a social level? Or was I creating it that way? Why didn’t everyone tense in the presence of authorities? Why didn’t other people panic when they had to give their name, or when they had to speak on the telephone to strangers? How was I managing to frame the world in such a negative way?

I eventually discovered that when I blocked, I did so to prevent myself from experiencing things I didn’t want to experience. But if it was I who created my speech blocks, then I needed to understandwhy I held myself back and blocked. What was I afraid of? What didn’t I want to see? What might happen if I let go? And how could I make my world less threatening?

There were two books back in the early 60s that provided me with a novel way to approach these issues. Both had to do with the running of my mind.

The first was a book called Psycho-Cybernetics by a plastic surgeon named Maxwell Maltz. Maltz makes a compelling case for the fact that your unconscious mind accomplishes whatever your conscious mind puts before it – similar to the way a technician programs a computer.

He points out that when confronting a performance fear – such as whether you can make the two-foot putt that wins the golf tournament – if you mentally image only what you’re afraid might happen, you’ll probably miss the putt. You need to focus all your attention on the desired positive outcome.

The problem is, my mind is also programmed to keep me safe by focusing on any imminent danger, such as the black widow spider on the ceiling or the footsteps behind me as I walk alone at night down a dark street. Not to think about the danger is counter-intuitive. Yet, I must do just that when dealing with a performance fear such as stuttering. The book offered some simple but compelling rules for how my mind worked.

The second book, S. I. Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action, was a simplified presentation of general semantics, developed in the 30s by Alfred Korzybski, one of the brilliant minds of the day. General semantics looks at how our habits of thinking color our experiences, and how the structure of language itself forces us to see things in a particular way. Thanks to general semantics, I had a platform from which I could step outside my normal frames of reference and observe and reframe my day-to-day experiences, thus making my world more manageable and less stressful.

Now fast forward 35 years. In early 2002 I received an email from Linda Rounds, a 38-year-old human resources director of a company in Indiana whom I had met over the Internet. Linda wrote to tell me that thanks to my book plus several telephone sessions with a remarkable individual named Bobby Bodenhamer, she had abruptly put an end to a lifelong stuttering problem.

I quickly got in touch with Bob to find out more. It appeared that Bob was a practitioner and teacher of something called neuro-semantics (NS). I discovered that NS is a further development of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) which, in turn, is a further development of general semantics, the discipline I had found so helpful back in the 60s. Now my interest was really piqued.

It was apparent from the first emails and later, through several phone conversations that Bob Bodenhamer and I were on the same wavelength. Although he had never stuttered himself, Bob had an intuitive understanding of issues that are central to stuttering. This is in part because neuro-semantics, which Bob teaches, addresses the very challenges that I had wrestled with when I was trying to overcome my own stuttering.

I was especially interested in what Bob had to say because, as a person who recovered from stuttering, I have frequently been asked how I got over it. After I tell my story, people naturally ask what they can do to follow in the same path.

Until very recently, I didn’t have much to offer when it came to the mind management aspect of stuttering. Maltz’s book is still relevant in a general way, but many people want guidance on specific steps they can take to address their blocking. And general semantics, though still valid in its precepts, also does not directly offer specific approaches and exercises on how to address the issues associated with stuttering.

All that has changed with the publication of this book.

A new resource

I Have a Voice is a compendium of concepts and tools that use the principles of Neuro-Semantics to reframe the mindset that leads to speech blocks. Several groups of people will directly benefit from this book.

Therapists and speech-language pathologists who work with those who stutter will find the various neuro-semantic processes and tools extremely helpful. As a practitioner, you’ll not only have resources for addressing the physical behaviors of your clients that are counter-productive to fluent speech, but for the first time, you’ll have tools for addressing the habits of thought that shape their negative mind state. This is a major resource that has been lacking in the therapist’s toolkit. Processes such as those for redefining self, altering states, reframing the meaning of stuttering, and remodeling behavior will now allow you to follow a multi-dimensional approach.

If you’re someone who stutters and are motivated to experiment with and explore your own stuttering, you’ll also find this book a great resource. You’ll acquire workable tools for modifying your mind and emotional states. This, in turn, will help you to counter the feelings of helplessness which are so disempowering and which can make speaking such a troubling experience.

Enterprising individuals who wish to run their own self-therapy program using neuro-semantics resources can be reassured they do not have to go it alone. Thanks to Linda Rounds, who serves as moderator, there is an Internet discussion group on Yahoowhere you can share your personal experiences using the principles and precepts described in this book. If you want to participate, you can register at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/neurosemanticsofstuttering. You will also have an opportunity to participate in some of the most intelligent discussions of stuttering-related issues found anywhere on the Internet.

A clarification of terms

Finally, a few observations about the word “stuttering.” Although stuttering is a commonly used word, it unfortunately contributes to the confusion because “stuttering” means too many different things.

People who have advanced cases of Parkinsons and who talk in a halting or jerky manner are often referred to as stuttering.

Young children who find themselves linguistically over their head might be labeled as stuttering, even though their speech may be effortless and without any attendant struggle behavior.

Anyone who finds himself upset, confused, uncertain, embarrassed or discombobulated may also have stretches of dysfluency, even though it is totally unself-conscious. I call this bobulating to distinguish this form of dysfluency from that in which the individual is momentarily blocked and unable to say a word.

Then there is blocking. Without a speech block, there will be no helplessness, frustration, embarrassment, and feelings of disempowerment. The speech block sits at the center of the problem and should not be confused with other kinds of dysfluency.

For reasons of clarity, we encourage people to use the word “blocking” when talking about their speech difficulties. But many remain wedded to the word “stuttering” and are not apt to easily give it up. This is understandable. It’s a familiar and commonly used word, and old habits die hard. Consequently, throughout this book, you will see references to the compound word “blocking/stuttering” to distinguish this kind of dysfluency from more general and non-disabling garden varieties of stuttering.

Go at your own pace

A word about the book as a whole. You are not encouraged consume it in one or two sittings. There is too much to think about and too many different processes to absorb in a short time. Rather, it is a reference book rich in understanding and chock full of tools and techniques that can help you get to the heart of you or your client’s blocking behaviors and issues. So sip it a bit at a time, live with the information, try out the processes with your clients or with yourself, and if you’re someone who stutters, share your thoughts and experiences on the Yahoo group with others of like mind.

Remember that blocking/stuttering is a complex system, and while a person’s speech habits substantially contribute to their blocking, their world their view and their habits of thought and perception are likely to be major contributors to the stuttering system and also need to be addressed.

Finally, be prepared for a series of “ah-hah” experiences as you explore blocking/stuttering in a new light and make powerful discoveries about the nature of stuttering and what it takes to recover.

BIOGRAPHY

John C. Harrison showed a marked dysfluency at the age of three and two years later underwent limited therapy. But these efforts were unsuccessful and he ultimately struggled with stuttering throughout college and well into adulthood. Then, in his 20s he immersed himself in a broad variety of personal growth programs, which gave him a unique insight into the nature and dynamics of the stuttering person. As a result, he has been fully recovered for the last 35 years and no longer deals with a stuttering problem.

One of the earliest members of the National Stuttering Association, Harrison was an 18-year member of the Board of Directors and spent nine years as the editor of Letting GO, the NSA’s monthly newsletter. He has run workshops for the stuttering and the professional communities across the US and Canada as well as in Ireland, the UK, and Australia. He has been published in Advance Magazine and the Journal of Fluency Disorders and has presented at conventions of the American Speech Language Hearing Association and the California Speech Language Hearing Association, as well as at the First World Congress on Fluency Disorders in Munich, Germany.

Harrison lives with his wife in San Francisco where he works as a presentation coach, speaker, and freelance writer. He also coaches people by phone on how to investigate, understand and transform the system that creates and maintains their stuttering system.

Introduction

I did not plan to work with people who block and stutter. Indeed, it happened quite by accident. Some years ago, a sales seminar participant asked me if I could help people who stutter. I told him that I didn’t know, but I sure would be glad to give it a try. His son, Charles, then twenty-five, came in for a two hour session. After one hour’s work we discovered that behind his blocking and stuttering were some fears of speaking that were rooted in childhood. Once he realized that he was mentally causing the stutter, he thanked me, paid me and left. And as far as I know, he gained complete fluency. The key for him was understanding that he was creating the stuttering, that it was neither something physical nor out of his control.

I have been working as a practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) since 1990. A major component of my work has been in dealing with fears, anxiety and phobias. Over those 14 years I have worked with hundreds of clients – approximately three thousand hours of therapy. NLP offers a model for understanding and for changing the way someone makes meaning of their experience, based on how they perceive their world in terms of language, thoughts, states and behaviors. NLP offers effective techniques which can be used widely: in therapy, sales, management, relationships, and, yes, for dealing with stuttering and much more. You will learn more about how change happens as the book unfolds.

Excited about the results with Charles, I wrote up a case study of the therapy and sent it to my colleague Michael Hall. He expanded this case study into an article, “Meta-Stating Stuttering: Approaching Stuttering Using NLP and Neuro-Semantics”, which I then posted on our website:http://www.neurosemantics.com/Articles/Stuttering.htm

After posting the article, I was contacted by a friend of mine whom I had worked with early in my practice. We had worked on his stuttering years earlier but that hadn’t helped him. After reading the article he called me and asked me if I had learned something new. I told him that I sure had and for him to come on over. Six months after our one hour session I saw him again and asked him how the stuttering was. He paused briefly, wrinkled his brow, and replied, “I guess I have forgotten to stutter.” “Well,” I said, “that sure is a great thing to forget to do.”

Needless to say, I was elated with that outcome. However, the major breakthrough came in the spring of 2002 when Linda Rounds emailed me from Indiana. In her search to overcome her stuttering she had read a work by Anthony Robbins at the recommendation of John Harrison. From Anthony Robbins she learned about NLP, so she searched Amazon.com for NLP books and found the book I co-authored with Michael Hall, The User’s Manual for the Brain. From that she obtained my email address and wrote to ask me if I could assist her. In just a few therapy sessions on the phone and via some emails, Linda gained complete fluency. Wow, was I excited. As a result, Linda and I wrote an article entitled “From Stuttering to Stability: A Case Study.” John Harrison published the article in the National Stuttering Association newsletter, Letting Go. I have included the complete article in Appendix B.

Because of this article I have had the opportunity to work with several People Who Stutter (PWS), including the speech pathologist Tim Mackesey, SLP (Speech Language Pathologist). It was somewhat ironic to assist to fluency a speech pathologist who had blocked and stuttered most of his life. Tim is now using my techniques in his own practice near Atlanta, Georgia, working with people who block and stutter.

Tim’s website is: www.stuttering-specialist.com.

Let me say up front that not everyone has attained fluency but many have. Importantly, out of all the people I have worked with, I am confident that all of them have the capacity to attain fluency eventually, just so long as they continue working on their thinking.

Chapter One

The Origins of Stuttering

How blocking begins

In every case I have worked with, the roots of the individual’s blocking are in childhood. Sometimes however, the actual blocking does not appear until adolescence or even adulthood. People who block usually refer to their non-fluency as blocking or stuttering (stammering in the UK). In itself, this is no problem. It is when they come to believe that blocking is something bad and to be feared that problems arise.

CASE STUDY 1

Susan was very angry with her parents because she believed that if they had not gotten all upset about her childhood problem of learning how to speak, then she would not have started blocking and stuttering. I encouraged Susan to speak with her mother about it. Here is Susan’s reply:

Well I did it! I spoke to my mom about my stuttering and it was not bad. I actually feel some peace. It is not complete, but better. I was afraid to talk to her but I did. We talked about stuttering openly but we didn’t talk about the touchy-feely stuff. I said I’d been very angry and explained how the work I do sometimes increases my feeling of anger because I think she could have behaved better. I was able to show empathy and to see it through her eyes. I think my parents did try a lot of things and I don’t think it was in the vengeful way that I always see. I think the way I chose to see things is definitely holding me back.

My mother was OK with this talk and actually supportive. I told her that I feel she still has feelings of embarrassment about my stuttering and she said, “I don’t worry about you, in my eyes you have made it, you are successful living a life and that’s all we wanted for you.” That was a shock to hear. Maybe I don’t get that I have already arrived in some ways in the work that I have done. I think I have refused to see that. I also realized that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life talking about my stuttering – there is more to life. I think I am too attached to my stuttering.

Sometimes I think it is a way to shield myself from my true feelings and relations to people. You are so busy thinking and being obsessed with stuttering that you don’t need to think about your feelings, it is a good feeling blocker. John Harrison said it is so much about feelings and not about stuttering. I never understood that before.

Susan’s story is typical of People Who Stutter (PWS). Her story illustrates the theme of this book: that stuttering is a learned behavior, and, as such, can be unlearned. However, much speech therapy in the United States addresses the symptoms rather than the cause, the physical components of blocking and stuttering and not the underlying meanings that the person has given to blocking and stuttering.

Childhood experiences

In that the origins of blocking and stuttering arise from emotional hurts experienced during childhood, the PWS is no different from the other people who seek my assistance. They all demonstrate a similar structure of learned negative associations which they are unable to control consciously. Although it is possible that a child has some kind of disfluency as a result of genetic defects, it ismore likely that their disfluency is just the normal stumbling with words as the child learns how to speak. However, should a parent or significant other adult think that the child has a speech problem, the child is told that they stutter and off to the speech pathologist they go. This confirms to the child that there is something unacceptable about their speech, and something wrong or unacceptable about them.

I have yet to find a person who fell in love with their stuttering. If every time they experience difficulty speaking they think of this as something bad, then over time this badness becomes a habit, and they generalize that badness to themselves. One question you could ask is “How do you know this is bad? Who told you?” The knowledge that their speech is abnormal usually comes from a parent or significant other person pointing out that there is something wrong with how they speak. (However, I have found a few people who block and stutter who placed the “bad” and “unacceptable” label on themselves without any knowledge of outside influences.)

Susan is a good example of this. She thinks that being dragged to a speech pathologist solidified her perception that she was flawed in some way, and that she had to be “perfect” in speech in order for her mother and father to like her.

Children who block describe non-fluency as something they wish to avoid or control. They may have reached their own conclusion on this, or based it on what adults or their peers have said. In addition, their blocking is connected to the negative emotions which accompanied some earlier painful experiences associated with not being fluent in speech. Many times the PWS will describe their experiences as being traumatic. Having friends mock you, or school teachers embarrassed because of how you speak can also “lock in the block.” Indeed, when a teacher stands a child up before a class and shouts “Spit it out!”, for the child who is trying to talk but can’t, it is trauma.

The precipitating event may not be something terrible or tragic; the child may have interpreted the divorce of the parents, the lack of affection from dad, the lack of emotional support from mom, or any emotional and physical abuse as being painful and threatening. The child does what all children tend to do – they personalize the external problems, assume some degree of responsibility, and then internalize and express the hurt in the muscles used for breathing/speaking. They begin to block.

Blocking is also connected with feelings of helplessness in not being able to speak when required to. This leads to feeling that you are different or strange – something children wish to avoid at all cost. From these childhood experiences the child learns that blocking and stuttering is unacceptable behavior, and grows up fearing that they will continue to block. The fear itself creates even more blocking and stuttering. Essentially, the PWS “becomes that which they fear most.”

This book is includes ways of identifying those painful emotions and suggests means of healing them.

The concept of self

Aperson’s concept of self grows and changes throughout their lifetime. It is first formalized by their caregivers who named them and began to relate to them as a separate individual. The child needs a firm foundation of how the world works. During their early years they do not critically filter incoming information because they have yet to develop the ability to think about, reflect on or question their experience. Instead, what they learn in childhood becomes their truth – and that proves both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes the child gets hold of the wrong end of the stick, as it were, when making meaning of their own behaviors, and that meaning may endure. The blocking then persists because the PWS continues to think in a “childish” way: the meaning of their behavior still relates to those early years experiences.

The same is true for practically all emotional problems that adults have. The issues I deal with therapeutically come from thinking patterns the clients learned in childhood. Allowing other people to determine your concept of self is appropriate when you are a young child, but not desirable as you mature. One solution to this problem is to get the PWS to grow up those parts of themselves which are stuck in childhood. The person first needs to practice mentally stepping back so that they may critically examine the beliefs they have carried with them since childhood. They use their adult mind to notice how they have constructed their model of the world, the beliefs that enable them to function, and then to update any which are obsolete.

One of the most debilitating beliefs of a PWS is their claim to know how other people perceive them. Yet they never check the truth or accuracy of such claims. I have discovered with people who block that the typical self-definition they received from others is based on mind-reading: they believe that other people view them as weird, dumb, different, mentally retarded, and so on. They take this on board, assume this information is accurate, and then live as if those self-descriptions are true. In their fear of being judged by others, they are in fact themselves unfairly judging others.

The Body-Mind connection

This connection is obvious in the most primitive of all mind-body functions, the fight/flight arousal pattern. You don’t have to be in actual danger to set it off. Simply remember or imagine something fearful and your body will respond by producing adrenalin. We find linguistic evidence of the connection in the expressions: gut feeling, pain in the neck, heartfelt, get things off your chest, and so on.

Those early negative influences concerning the child’s speech become grooved into the child’s muscles and are carried into adulthood. By “grooved into the muscles” I refer to someone’s ability to learn unconsciously; it is as though what we learn literally becomes embodied into our muscle tissue (referred to as muscle memory). For example, if you touch-type, and I ask you where the R key is, how will you locate it? Did your left index finger twitch and move up to the left? That would be an example of “in the muscle” learning.

Because people who stutter tend to feel the fears or anxieties that contribute to their blocking in the muscles that control breathing and speaking, I propose that blocking is similar in structure to panic and anxiety attacks. This means that the treatment could also be similar because emotions have become expressed in the body.

Over the years of doing therapy, I have asked hundreds of clients, “Where in your body do you feel that negative emotion?” Usually the PWS who feels a negative emotion can pinpoint the area of the body where they feel that emotion. There have been very few instances when the person was unable to tell me exactly where they felt it. Check this for yourself. Think of something you fear or recall a recent emotional hurt. Then notice where in your body that emotion finds expression.

For people who block, negative emotions are typically centered within the chest, neck and/or jaw. Ask a person who blocks:

Which emotions have you associated with your blocking?Where in your body do you feel these emotions?Where in you body do you feel the fear and anxiety as you anticipate the possibility of blocking?What do you think about these feelings?

As these feelings diminish, the blocking and stuttering also lessen and the person becomes more fluent.

Not every client accepts that their emotions are created – a product of thought – rather than real. “But, Dr Bob, I ‘feel’ that anxiety in my body and if I feel it, it must be real!” That is the normal response: if I feel it, it is real. For the PWS, the emotions around blocking and stuttering are more real than that for they have the strong physiological response associated with blocking and stuttering. So no wonder many in the speech pathology profession believe that stuttering is a physical problem. It is so real: “Just look at my facial contortions when I block.”

CASE STUDY 2