Stuttering in a Foreign Language
I have an article in the current issue of "Letting Go", the newsletter of the National Stuttering Association. Check it out!
Short but simple
I came across a Zen phrase today that nicely summarizes my whole stuttering philosophy:
"What you resist persists, and what you allow to be disappears."
Sorry for the lack of posts, but hopefully this little gem makes up for it.
Past the Point of No Return
I was discussing stuttering with my wife last week (after we went to see The King's Speech) and she said, "You know, you don't really stutter anymore." This came as a surprise. After all, I do occasionally get a bit stuck on a word and have to slow down or take a breath. I think what she meant is that my level of fluency has been pretty normal lately. Like all speakers I sometimes repeat sounds or take a pause, but for the most part I'm no longer avoiding, struggling, or forcing. For her, those behaviors -- not regular disfluency -- characterize stuttering.
I met my wife over 4 years ago, and at that point stuttering was still a big issue. I stuttered regularly (especially at work) but, even worse, I felt "trapped" by stuttering. I felt that stuttering limited my life choices and career opportunities. So I took on the project of dealing with stuttering head-on. I'd seen speech therapists over the years, but what I wanted was different from speech therapy. I wanted not to be afraid of stuttering any more, to live with the confidence and ease of someone who doesn't stutter.
My project involved joining a stuttering support group (sponsored by the NSA), taking meditation classes, reading books on stuttering, body language, and assertiveness, and trying to root out avoidance behaviors. It wasn't easy. Sometimes I stuttered more than ever, and I found speaking especially hard at work (where I regularly had to speak under pressure). But slowly -- almost imperceptibly -- I was making progress. With practice, I became more comfortable with pauses in speech. I learned how breathing and physical relaxation affect my speech. I spoke in "scary" situations. And I occasionally have moments of recognition that stuttering isn't the spectre that it used to be -- in fact, many people I interact with wouldn't have any idea that I stutter.
But would I say that I don't stutter anymore? That's a stretch. My wife suggests that maybe I'm unnecessarily holding on to my identity as a stutter -- that maybe it's time to "move on." While that might be nice (and really what for years I hoped to be able to do), I don't think it would be helpful. The fundamental problem is that I still have a tendency to stutter. I've found effective ways of dealing with that tendency, but in my experience every time I think I might be done with stuttering I almost immediately become attached to a new identity as a non-stutterer. Then, when the tendency to stutter arises (as it eventually will) I'll instinctively avoid stuttering, or struggle against it. (After all, a non-stutterer shouldn't be stuttering, right?) But avoidance and struggle is stuttering, and so suddenly I'm stuttering again and worried that it's out of my control. A single encounter where I'm avoiding and struggling (say, dinner with somebody I want to impress) can trigger a downward spiral from which it takes weeks to recover.
With experience I recognize this cycle and can recover from it more and more quickly. But recovery involves embracing stuttering and relaxing with it, not hiding from it. What this means to me is that it's unwise to talk about not stuttering anymore. For the foreseeable future I'll have to continue to accept stuttering as a part of my identity even if other people don't see me that way. This helps me manage my speech, but I'm also happy to be part of a community of people who stutter, and I think it's important to recognize and acknowledge how my life has been shaped by stuttering.
I'd love to talk to people who consider themselves to be recovered stutterers. I wonder if it really ever goes away completely, or if stuttering past adolescence and into adulthood means you've passed the point of no return and stuttering will be with you forever. For example, I know that Joe Biden used to stutter -- but when I see avoidance like this I doubt whether he's really put it completely behind him.
I'm definitely happy about the direction I'm headed in -- the path towards confident speaking has been a hard battle. Maybe in ten or fifteen years I'll be able to look back and say that it's been years since I worried about stuttering. But that's not something I'm going to strive for or attach any importance to. In the meantime I'm not quite ready to leave stuttering behind.
Great Stuttering Essay in Slate
See The Stutterer. This is a great "send to your friends" article.
Can anyone tell me what the last sentence means, though?
Using speech techniques
At a recent NSA support group meeting, someone asked whether I intentionally/consciously use any particular fluency "techniques" when I'm speaking. I liked the question, so I'm going to try to paraphrase my answer here.
Basically, I don't use any specific techniques as advised by speech therapists or books. Frankly, I've found speech techniques and tricks (easy onsets, prolongations, etc.) to be counterproductive, since if they work well I come to depend on them as a crutch. What I do aim for is (1) accepting my stuttering; (2) stretching myself to cut out more and more avoidance behaviors; and (3) trying to be more and more present and conscious to speaking, stuttering, and my emotions about both. I want my speech to be as free from artificial control as possible, because I believe that my stuttering is reinforced and made worse by artificial control.
If I concentrate on anything -- say, in a high-pressure speaking situation where I'm worried about stuttering -- it's my breathing (want it to be relaxed, deep, and natural), my body language (comfortable, open, confident posture), and speaking rate ("gearing down" rather than rushing). I also try to relax my chest and jaw and pay attention to how they feel. A "block" for me is usually caused by attempts to not stutter, either by holding my breath or clenching my jaw -- both of which are obviously bad for speech (though they're natural stress responses).
That's it. I will add that the best speech therapists I've worked with seemed to want me to get to a place where I could get past the techniques and be my own therapist, and that most of what they taught me pointed to the things I listed above, which now seem natural and organic.
The real work was getting to the point where I could stay conscious to all of this rather than panicking, numbing out, or avoiding the situation in the first place. And that took a bunch of work that didn't have much to do with speech therapy.
The Relapse Cycle
Let me get something off my chest: the ideas I’m writing about in this blog, having the “courage to stutter” and so on, reflect what I aspire to more than where I actually am. I still hate stuttering. I still numb out and resort to bad habits. I envision a glorious future of perfect acceptance and equanimity where I don’t care about stuttering any more -- but I’m not quite there yet in the real world.
I think the most obvious symptom of my ongoing hang ups with stuttering is the perpetual “relapse cycle,” where I reach some level of fluency for a while, and then, all of a sudden, start avoiding more and stuttering more.
I recently came across an article on this topic by Woody Starkweather, a prominent stuttering clinician. He describes exactly what happens to me when one of these relapses occurs:
Soon small "microstutters" begin to occur and are at first ignored because they seem so inconsequential. The memory of the truly horrendous stuttering is still there to compare with these little sticky words. But the microstutters give rise to equally small avoidance behaviors, which may occur almost without thought. The use of avoidance behaviors, even though they are very small ones, increases the fear that motivates them, as Bandura (1969) pointed out many years ago, leading to slightly larger, more effortful stuttering, which in turn leads to larger avoidance behaviors, and so on, until, if not checked by the person, the full panoply of stuttering behaviors can return. This seems more like a relapse in that an element of the original disorder (avoidance) reappears, and this pattern has the same sense of insidious invasion that the regrowth of cancer cells has.
But again, it seems wrong to call this a relapse. What has in fact happened is that old fears, fears that were not removed in the first place, have prompted the stutterer to try to hide or avoid the stuttering, although in an apparently minor way, as a result of which the microstutters began. Then the person begins again to use avoidance behaviors. It is the use of the avoidance behaviors that caused the cycle of fear --> avoidance --> fear --> avoidance to recur. If the microstutters were simply accepted as current reality, or if voluntary stuttering were used to prevent the development of new fears, the microstutters might occur, but the slide into "relapse" would not.
When stuttering was a bigger deal in my life, this pattern was a nightmare. Nowadays I think it’s easy for me to accept relapse behavior as my “current reality” and it usually isn’t a big deal.
The relapse phenomenon is interesting because it reminds me that I still have work to do to really let go of stuttering. I’m willing to “accept” stuttering if that makes it go away -- but then I want to forget about it and move on. The reality is that I’m in my mid-30’s and stuttering hasn’t magically disappeared yet. It’s probably never going to go away completely. Given this pattern, I need to keep up practice and conditioning even when I’m doing well. Two strategies for this:
- Voluntary stuttering on an ongoing basis.
- Pushing myself to try harder and more stressful speaking situations.
Eventually I want to be at a place where almost all of my stuttering is voluntary, and I have a feeling of control and mastery over speech even when I’m tired and feeling crappy.
I'm not there yet, though.
Sorry for the Silence
I'm busy with work and a photography class, and haven't had time to post.
Here's a little tidbit -- I just found out about The King's Speech, an upcoming movie that is literally about the courage to stutter. Given the negative portrayal of stuttering in film, this looks like a gem (and it won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival this year).
The Art of the Pause
Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience.
- Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance
One of the most helpful techniques I learned on my path to more fluent speech is the deliberate pause. By "deliberate pause" I mean intentionally taking a break in speech while staying relaxed, being present, and perhaps taking a breath.
Here are some reasons why pausing has been helpful for me:
- Pausing gives me some space to wake up from the "trance of stuttering," when conditioned habits tend to take over (like averting eye contact or rushing ahead). By being more present and aware, I have more control.
- Pausing helps me to be more assertive. I often stutter when I feel rushed, or when I feel I don't "deserve" to take the time I need to say something. Pausing deliberately helps me assert my presence and be more aware of the unhelpful feeling that I need to hurry through my speech.
- Pausing gives me some time to take a breath, maybe even a deep breath. Speech is driven mainly by breathing, so it's important to do so. Taking a breath is also relaxing. I found when I took a yoga class a few years ago that I could speak very fluently after class sessions, and I suspect that the main reason was that classes involved an hour or more of deep breathing.
- Finally, pausing helps me reestablish my speech rhythm. I know that my stuttering is closely related to the rhythm of speech. (If stuttering does have a neurological basis, I'd bet it has something to do with timing.) Slowing down and tweaking my rhythm is sometimes all that's necessary to avoid disfluent speech.
Photo by Steve (flickr.com/photos/wasoxygen)
Taking time to pause deliberately is useful whether you think you're about to stutter or you're speaking naturally and fluently. If you're about to stutter, reminding yourself to pause is an excellent way to wake up and pay attention to what's happening for you. Are you breathing shallowly? Is your jaw clenched? What's your body language like? Pausing even for a half a second may yield valuable insights that make you a better student of stuttering.
But be warned: just because pausing seems straightforward doesn't mean that it's necessarily easy. Pausing for even half a second in the face of an embarrassing stuttering moment might prove to be quite difficult. If you habitually numb out or panic when you're stuttering, you'll need to work up to staying present long enough to take a pause.
A useful way to practice pausing is to do so when you're not stuttering. Try it sometime. In the middle of a conversation, pause at an unusual point in speech, perhaps in the middle of a sentence. Hold the pause as long as you can -- for a second or two if possible -- while maintaining eye contact with your listener and staying relaxed. How does it feel? You might find it quite uncomfortable at first, especially if you place a lot of pressure on yourself to speak fluently.
Pausing while speaking fluently is a good exercise in assertive speaking. Just like everyone else, you have the right to take the time you need to say what you want. By *choosing* to pause, you can slow down mindfully and pay attention to what it feels like to pause. Over time you'll build confidence that pauses -- and other interruptions in speech -- are okay.
Easy Stuttering
From what I can tell, there seem to be two camps in the world of stuttering research: the "stuttering modification" camp, which basically argues that the way to deal with stuttering is to stutter more openly, and the "fluency shaping" camp, which seeks techniques (and even physical devices and drugs) to eliminate stuttering. These two positions tend reflect two opposing viewpoints about what causes stuttering. One viewpoint is that stuttering is mainly a collection of bad habits learned over many years and reinforced by personality traits such as nervousness. The opposing stance is that stuttering is a neurological or physiological trait and that by practicing techniques such as slow speech, speakers can achieve fluency.
As with most polarized battles (U.S. politics, anyone?) the truth is somewhere in the middle, and most people are open-minded. I'd go so far as to say that any speech therapist who is "disciple" of one of these camps isn't going to help you much in the long run. But the older I get, the more I appreciate the wisdom of the stuttering modification approach. When I was younger I wanted fluency-shaping magic to make stuttering go away, but as the years pass and the number of speech therapists I've seen increases, I realize there's no way to magically eliminate stuttering. As I take responsibility for my own stuttering and pay close attention to how it actually works, I see that my stuttering is very closely related to bad habits such as avoidance and averted eye contact, and to my nervousness in difficult situations.
A friend recently sent me a link to Easy Stuttering, an e-book by Joseph and Vivian Sheehan. The therapy techniques definitely belong to the stuttering modification camp, but with a dose of common sense that reflects Joseph's years of experience as a stutterer. He says that the reason stuttering remedies often fail is that "they all mean suppressing stuttering, covering up, doing something artificial. And, the more you cover up and try to avoid stuttering, the more you will stutter." He talks about the vicious circle of stuttering: shame causes fear, fear causes avoidance, fear and avoidance cause stuttering, and stuttering reinforces shame and fear.
The Brain Doesn’t Understand “Don’t”
When you're in a situation where you think you're about to stutter, what's going through your mind? Do you picture yourself calmly and fluidly forming the word you're about to say, or do you imagine all the different ways you could stutter? Are you breathing calmly and naturally, or are you holding your breath and tensing up to "get out the word"?
Last week I was reading Golf is Not a Game of Perfect by Dr. Bob Rotella, a sports psychologist who has worked with some of the top golfers in the game. (As I've mentioned earlier, I've recently decided to give golf another shot after giving up as a teenager.) One thing in the book really stood out. Rotella says that when you're on the course and actually making your shot, you should only be thinking about one thing: where you want the ball to go. You shouldn't be thinking about the woods off to the left or the pond to the right, both of which would eat your ball.