Stammering in Adults 1st Appointment
The Individuality of Your Stammer
Your stammer is unique to you. Although similarities exist between people who stammer, the range of behaviours and the effect that stammering has on each person can vary considerably. People often think about their stammering in terms of the overt features: the behaviours that can be seen and heard by the listener. It is also important to consider the covert or hidden features. These include how you feel about your stammer, and the strategies you have developed in an effort to help you cope, including, for example, avoiding feared words or situations. These covert features are highly individual and develop through personal experiences of stammering over the years. They can have a significant impact on your ability to communicate as effectively as you would like to, and on how you view yourself, yet they are not as obvious to others as the overt features may be.
“The Iceberg” – If we view stammering like an iceberg, then we can see that only a part of it is seen and heard, while much of it remains below the surface.
OVERT repeating words forcing
words out etc.
COVERT Avoidances, e.g.
Changing words, avoiding
going into shops, etc.
Feelings about being someone
who stammers, etc.
Different people will have different amounts and types of stammering behaviours showing on the surface, and different amounts and types of behaviours and feelings concealed.
“The Vicious Circle” - Your present coping strategies may be undermining you. You have probably developed defensive strategies over the years to help you cope with stammering – and with good reason. Perhaps you feel that stammering is hard to talk about and you may have developed these strategies on your own with a sense of isolation. Speech and Language Therapy will provide an opportunity to talk about such issues. The strategies you have developed may not be as helpful in the long term as they appeared to be when they were originally developed. In fact, such strategies can actually contribute to the problem becoming a “vicious circle”. For example:-
Anticipation
Stammering Avoidance
Frustration
Anxiety Tension
You anticipate that a certain word/situation will be difficult, so you avoid it in some way. This may lead to frustration or anxiety and tension because you were not able to say what you wanted. As a result, you may stammer. This reinforces your feeling that you were right to anticipate stammering in the first place, and the vicious cycle is established.
Breaking “the vicious circle” – Speech and language therapy will consider both the overt and covert features of stammering. This will help to break the vicious circle and together with your therapist, you will identify and work through goals to meet your individual’s needs.
Considering Change – therapy begins by helping you to identify the overt and covert features of your stammering. You may not have talked about your stammer very openly before and it may be difficult at first, but this is the first step in a gradual process of change.
Accepting yourself as someone who stammers is a very positive step in reducing your fear and anticipation about stammering. The less you judge yourself negatively for stammering, the less you may stammer. By exploring your own stammer, you learn more about what you do and why, and confront the issues that you may have tried to conceal for many years. This does not imply that you have to accept the current limitations on your communication. As you explore you also take on a ‘scientist’ role where you experiment with change. This can involve gradually reducing the avoidance strategies, decreasing your anticipation of stammering, and increasing your tolerance of the reactions of others.
Changing in this way can have a positive ‘knock-on’ effect on the overt behaviours too. If necessary, the Speech and Language Therapist will help you to further modify the overt stammering at a later stage in the therapy process.
Taking Control of Your Life – One Step at a Time
Change of any kind can be difficult and sometimes even threatening. Your Speech and Language Therapist will help you to attempt to change in small, gradual steps, but you have to want to change and be willing to take some risks in order to take those steps towards change.
Speech and Language Therapy does not offer to ‘make you fluent’ or to ‘cure your stammer’. Our aim is to help you to help yourself to become a more effective and confident communicator: being able to say what you want to when you want to.
Can it be done?
Here are some comments from people who have experienced the therapy approach:-
‘The therapy I received was very helpful, it gave me an understanding of why I
stammered and helped me admit it to myself’.
‘I wish I’d had therapy years ago. It has given me more confidence in myself’.
‘Therapy – must be a time to ‘declare your iceberg’ and begin chipping away at it. It is
also a time to realise that the stammer is only one facet of the personality and to
distinguish between the person and the stammer’.