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When Is an Avoidance an Avoidance, When Is it a Therapy Technique? — 4 Comments

  1. Interesting post, Gunnars. I like the descriptions of the various types of word avoidance because I use word avoidance all the time when I can’t spell something or think of a word when I’m typing. So I substitute another word that gets my meaning across. I just did it again “gets my meaning across” rather than checking the correct spelling for “synonym”:-) It is not a “fear” situation. It just “is.”

    I’m not saying that I approve or support word avoidance in stuttering, but I do know one positive outcome for some people who stutter that I know well — they are so good at substituting another word that they have developed enormous vocabularies, and they would beat be in Scrabble any day;-) A Scrabble tournament at an NSA convention would be interesting!

  2. My name is Logan. I used to avoid a stutter by either not speaking or trying to change the subject.It’s like trying to beat a really hard level in a video game.Some words that I stutter on start with S,W,M,N,and R.I hope I can find new techniques to help me to NOT avoid my stuttering and go through it without any mistakes.

  3. This is very nuanced stuff! I find for some people, loss of control avoidance can be dangerous. To me, the act of stopping to pause or inserting a starter phrase until the person feels they have gained control could easily equate with pausing or using a starter until the person feels he will be fluent. Many clients have such a heavy core of internal drives to suppress stuttering, that anything that reinforces how awful it is to not be in control is also reinforcing that it is awful to REALLY stutter. Along similar lines, while one might have a client do some struggle-free voluntary stuttering for desensitization and to experience stuttering without tension, I have seen people start to then see voluntary stuttering as a means of not stuttering! When someone says, “I tried some voluntary stuttering and it didn’t work”,with probing you often find he meant that they stuttered for real in addition to stuttering voluntarily. Of course what is essential is the intention behind the act.
    As for 5, 6, and 7, Since I believe that people who stutter naturally reduce emotional negativity, severity of speech struggle, and levels of tension when they strip away avoidances of words, people, situations, these could be termed under “Avoiding avoidances”

  4. Gunars,

    I am currently completing my masters in speech language pathology and am in a stuttering class. We’ve talked about avoidance in the class. I think it is good to define the different types of avoidance. It develops an understanding of behaviors and emotions. I do have a question about your system: do you find it too narrowly defined? Are patients able to recognize which type of the 8 they are defaulting to?