Treatment vs Acceptance
Hi fellow PWS!
What’s your advice on treatment vs acceptance?
Do you think a person can have both acceptance that they stutter and treatment for stuttering, or do you feel they are mutally exclusive?
Everyone responds differently to treatment, so for me I feel I need both, but it’s still difficult not to beat myself up when I have a little hiccup.
Hello, Bruce! Thank you for your participation in the conference, and for asking the first question to this year’s PWS Panel.
I have dealt with this issue in different ways throughout my life.
Since acceptance can be part of stuttering treatment, or even the whole focus of stuttering treatment, I will phrase the question as 1) trying to enhance one’s fluency, or 2) self-acceptance as a person who happens to stutter.
Both can certainly co-exist, but for me different sides of this issue have dominated during different periods of my life.
My stuttering is severe, and it began as soon as I started putting sentences together.
For decades, I was obsessed with increasing my fluency. During the 1970’s and 1980’s (when I was in my 20’s and 30’s), I attended four different fluency shaping programs. I desperately wanted to become a more fluent speaker, and my ideal dream was to become a totally fluent speaker always!
My “success” with these fluency shaping programs varied. But one program which dramatically helped me was the Precision Fluency Shaping Program of the Hollins Communications Research Institute, Roanoke, Virginia. (Neither the program nor the institute still exists.)
Through intensively practicing and monitoring Precision Fluency techniques, I was able to achieve what I thought was a wonderful fantastic dream come true! Three months after attending this three-week program, after intensive daily practicing, I found myself fluent everywhere!! I was so terrifically pleased – I thought that finally, my stuttering was gone – and forever!
This fluency lasted for a number of months. But eventually it fell apart – the daily practice necessary for me to maintain fluency (an hour a day), was just too much for me. When my practice slacked off – I just couldn’t maintain it – my fluency did also.
I also found that in order to regain fluency after a relapse, it was necessary to go through a fluency therapy refresher of a week’s duration.
For many years, this was my pattern – attending fluency refresher after fluency refresher, resuming fluent speaking with intensive practice. This renewed fluency typically lasted for weeks, sometimes for months. But each fluency period eventually fell apart. This on-again off-again nature to my experiences with fluency started getting tiresome. Was it really worth all the effort to maintain these periods of fluency?
About a quarter-century ago, I finally answered no to this question. Enough was enough! I gradually came to the conclusion that it was perfectly fine to have a speech difference. I began to simply, calmly, and peacefully accept myself as a person who happens to stutter.
And what I found was that I became much happier as a person. Life became much more fun, much more satisfying, much less pressured.
So what if I have a speech difference? People are different individuals, with differing abilities in diverse aspects of life.
I decided it just was not worth the efforts to try to transform myself into a consistently fluent speaker. I now accept myself as I am, as I have been, and as I will continue to be.
Consistent fluency is NOT a prerequisite to life happiness!
For some people, work to enhance fluency and self-acceptance as a person who happens to stutter can go hand-in-hand.
But for me personally, self-acceptance is enough in itself. If I stutter, well so what? If I stutter severely, well so what? It’s just a difference that I happen to have, that’s all.
And I discovered that one can have a perfectly happy life, without being a consistently fluent speaker.
Hi Bruce,
I don’t see treatment and acceptance as something exclusive at all, although for a long time I saw it that way.
When I was a child I had speech therapy and the goal was to hide my stuttering. This obviously created a lot of problems, especially at the mental health level.
But today I am doing therapy to eliminate my avoidance and escape behaviors, and stutter more openly.
So I think it really depends on the goal of the therapy.
Andrea
Hi Andrea,
I am currently earning my master’s degree in speech-language pathology. I was wondering if you could elaborate more on how your perspective on goal setting shifted as you aged?
Do you feel that there are specific ways/strategies that helped you the most without making you feel like you had to change who you are or feel like you had to “hide” your stuttering?
Hi!
What a great question.
I think my goals have changed because of my reading (especially Critical Disability Studies) and my participation in communities where stuttering is not seen as something negative.
Therefore, my goals today are mostly about my life (you could see them under the lens of self-efficacy): to have a job, to be autonomous, to be happy, to feel fulfilled, etc.
This has changed because I realised that it is possible to have a great life with or without a stutter and despite the stigma surrounding it.
Andrea
Hi Bruce
I always speak of “act” being a part of the word “accept”. Acceptance to me is a safety net to fall back on when my speech isn’t the way I want it to be (and this is different for any of us, as for some it means total fluency, while for others it can be just getting out of a block, to others keep calm and stutter on). The act part can be speech techniques, but also stepping out of your comfort zone. So yes, I wish for everyone to do/have both. Both the acceptance that stuttering just IS, not a blessing, not a curse, it’s simply the way I speak, and I’m OK with myself as I know my worth. And also the act part, where I try to improve my life (note: this doesn’t have to do with my speech) by finding and using the ways that help me to say what I want to say, whem, where and in the way I want to say it. Using both can help melting both parts of the iceberg.
keep talking
Anita