Feeling Supported
Hi! My name is Emma, and I am currently a graduate student studying Speech-Language Pathology. As I learn more about working with people who stutter, I want to better understand how to make therapy feel supportive and meaningful. What is something an SLP has done (or something you wish an SLP had done) that helped you feel more comfortable and confident communicating? Thank you for sharing your experiences!
Thank you, Emma, for this most interesting question!
In my own case, I have a multitude of answers, since I estimate I’ve seen about 35 different therapists in my lifetime for stuttering – with a great variety of therapeutic approaches.
Of the many clinicians I have seen for speech, I count seven who were significantly helpful to me, and three of those were VERY helpful.
I will concentrate here on the therapists who were significantly helpful to me.
I began stuttering at about age 3, and started to see speech therapists at about age 4. By that time, my stuttering was severe.
I had many speech therapists during my childhood, but none were able to help, or even seemed to understand anything about severe stuttering.
When I was in high school, I had my first experience with a clinical program that actually was helpful. I learned traditional techniques such as pullouts, reducing secondary symptoms, and reducing avoidances. The lengths and frequency of my blocking, for the first time in my life, started to improve.
As an undergraduate, I had a number of helpful therapies. One speech pathologist (they weren’t called SLP’s then), who I saw for three years – who also stuttered himself – gave me some very important advice that I followed the best I could, even though it wasn’t easy. After he got me to admit, with some reluctance on my part, that I had no close friends to speak of, he told me that I MUST get out there and meet people, REGARDLESS of how severe my stuttering happened to be. (And at that time, my stuttering was considerably more severe than now.) So I did. On the college campus where I was then a student (I was about 20 years old), I made it a point to meet as many of my fellow students as I could. I still stuttered very severely, but my social life improved immensely, and I discovered a very important fact that I hadn’t realized before – that most people just don’t care how fluent you happen to be; they’re much more interested in your CONTENT, not in how you say it.
My next therapy seemed almost miraculous. When I was a college senior (in the mid-1970’s), I was involved in an experimental program based on following commands in speaking fluently for increasing lengths of speech units. Eventually I became able to speak fluently for extended periods of time. This didn’t involve techniques, simply a certain mindset. I remember vividly talking fluently on the phone to a friend for an hour, a totally new experience for me – my first fluency ever, outside a speech clinic. (I was then age 21.) I was so absolutely amazed! I had little understanding of WHY this was happening. (My clinicians simply told me that I was “controlling” my speech. But I knew that I wasn’t.) Even today, it’s hard to explain. Eventually a third of my situations became fluent, and another third had reduced disfluency. I told the clinicians that these felt like mysterious “fluency feelings” – which they dismissed as nonsense. But this didn’t last. After about a half-year, it all fell apart. The clinicians wondered why I wasn’t “controlling” my speech any more. But I knew I never had been. This was just something mysterious, with nothing solid behind it.
About a year later, I tried airflow therapy at a clinic in New York City. At first I was able to use the technique inside the clinic, but not outside the clinic. But after the therapy week, for months I diligently practiced the technique daily. And my speech gradually improved – until I was speaking fluently in about a third of my situations, with the airflow technique. I was enjoying my speech progress.
But eventually my progress fell apart (within a half-year), and my severe stuttering was back in all situations.
Seven years later (at the age of 30) I entered a program in which I found the most success. This was the Precision Fluency Shaping Program, developed by the Hollins Communications Research Institute, Roanoke, Virginia. (Both the program and institute no longer exist.) In that program I learned specific techniques involving breathing, gentle onsets, and stretched sounds.
At first, as in other programs, I could just use the techniques inside the clinic.
But after the three-week program, I practiced very diligently for an hour or more a day. Within three months, I was fluent EVERYWHERE – something I had never before experienced in my life. Indeed I felt that I would never stutter again – I felt “cured”!
But, alas, I wasn’t. My initial fluency did last for quite a few months. When I practiced intensively and daily, I was consistently fluent. But when I slacked off in practice, my fluency declined, and stuttering returned. Since I couldn’t always practice for an hour a day, I couldn’t maintain the fluency in the long term.
For years, I had numerous intensive week-long refreshers, trying to bring back the old magic. And indeed I succeeded at this many times following refreshers, enjoying consistent fluency for periods of weeks, and sometimes months. But it was never permanent, and always fell apart eventually.
For about 15 years, that was the pattern – a fluent period following a refresher, then a disfluent period, then a fluent period following a refresher, then a disfluent period. Over and over again. I got tired of this.
About 25 years ago, I changed my speech philosophy entirely. I decided that fluency was no longer a life goal of mine. I started accepting myself as a person who just happens to stutter. And if I happen to be disfluent, well so what? Life happiness and satisfaction do not depend on consistent fluency of speech. That is a lesson that took me many decades to absorb.
Once I got rid of my former obsession to be as fluent as I possibly could be at all times, my life happiness increased. Once I got rid of the overwhelming desire to become a fluent person, I began to see life in a new way. I could accept ME, just as I was – and as I am today – a person who happens to have a stuttering difference. That’s all. Enormous pressure was lifted from my shoulders, and I now could enjoy life to the fullest. However I speak, that’s how I speak. And if I’m not the most fluent person in the world, well so what?
And come to think of it, this new approach – which was total self-therapy – was my best therapy of all!
I hope this rather lengthy account has been helpful to you.
Best luck in your future career!
– Paul