Overcoming stuttering
Alexander Degilevich's сomprehensive program
Alexander Degilevich's сomprehensive program
To get better result in stuttering elimination, it is not enough to solve the problem only cosmetically (to fix it externally).You need to handle the reasons of speech defects in your mind, to find out the real causes of stuttering and to work on their elimination in your mind. My job is to show how to immediately get rid of the stuttering by your own, to normalize your speech in such way that its quality would not depend on the situations and would not be built on rehearsed technique. And also it`s important to avoid the relapse. To achieve such a result and to be able to speak fully, it is necessary to find out the psychological barriers leading to stuttering, and to work hard on their elimination. Usually a person puts limitations on himself or herself. And later these limitations influence their speech. Having found these barriers, we get rid of them: first in your mind, and then – applying it externally (the level of speaking). Our main goal is to speak freely, smoothly, overcoming stuttering. And it can be achieved only through hard work on each of the levels. This is how an experienced speech psychotherapist should work. He will definitely run the diagnostic of your problem, find the optimal approach to stuttering elimination (for children or adults) and work with you using the most effective methods for making your speech better.
1. First it`s important to find out the pattern of symptoms which doesn’t allow a man to speak without stuttering. It is connected with the subconscious inability to say something without stuttering, smoothly. When a man in his head imagines that he can`t pronounce a word (or words) correctly, he builds a block by himself. Trying desperately to find a way out, he tries to “push” the complex sound out and excessively strain the muscles of the speech organs (and other muscles in the body). Some can twitch or nod their head while others can bite their tongue, and so on. But this is the way how a person begins to stutter, and he does it through his own efforts.
In this case, first of all, it is necessary to understand that stuttering is a healthy pattern. There are causes and there are consequences. And it means that to eliminate stuttering everything you need is to understand this very cause and to get rid of it. It`s necessary to explain to a man who suffers from speech problems, that nobody is rushing him, nobody is waiting for his immediate response. We create stressful situations by ourselves. We can overcome them. And we can choose the way of communication which is comfortable for us. Remember, any stutter can calmly talk to himself without stuttering and feeling uncomfortable.
2. Then, when the nature of the problem is identified, we should start working on ways to resolve it. A man should imagine a word in his mind without making speech or intonation mistake. And after that he should say this word correctly. To achieve the result, it is important to understand, right down to details, the way of pronunciation which is used by those people who don`t stutter. You should be able to set priorities and use them in practice. In difficult situations, when the stutterer has a stupor, it is necessary to effectively use pauses which will help you to figure out what to do. This stage takes a lot of time, but the success of stuttering elimination depends on the assimilation this technique and its application in practice.
3. Also you should understand what you need to do to eliminate mistakes and emotional discomfort when you speak. The basis of good speech is your confidence that you are able to speak the right way, without stuttering. You should just speak, don’t think about the techniques, which help you to get rid of your speech defects (otherwise, you’ll just fixate on it). Our brains are wired so that in a moment we can either think or speak. If you try to do both at the same time, you will necessarily have a stupor. That’s why it’s very important to learn to control unconsciously your speech organs.
In general, it can seem to you that finding solutions to this problem is a very difficult process. But it’s not true, if a qualified specialist works with you. A practitioner, who professionally diagnoses your problem, will make a plan according to your challenges (needs). This plan will be understandable for you. And it will count your individual needs and your ability to learn. At the same time, on each stage you will be able to feel good outcomes from different techniques primarily aimed at free speech and the well-being in the process of speaking. In addition, you should definitely have the opportunity of cost-free second treatment, in case if something goes wrong and you are not able (in your opinion) to speak freely without the efforts. Not a lot of speech therapists/performers/tutors/speech psychotherapists provide such service (option). But if they do, it means that a very effective work will be organized. And during this process you will be offered all tools and techniques, which are necessary for normal speech (including the techniques which allow you not to think of any techniques at the moment of speech, naturally focusing your attention on it). In any case, during the training sessions of stuttering elimination, you need to feel that any speech is not very hard for you. And at the same time you should feel quite natural and comfortable!
I am writing this for those who have a stuttering issue and who would like to get rid of it and is ready to take steps in this direction. You should have the more or less objective evaluation of the situation on the market for speech improvement services. This information will be very useful for those who do really want to have a normal speech and want to understand the solution to the problem of stuttering. Personally, I`ve experienced a speech impediment until the age of 23. Finally, I found the information which helped me to turn a big problem into a small one. For the most part, I was able to speak normally, my speech was free from defects. And I want to warn you to beware of offers of services from those people who promise you “the full normalization of speech, elimination/getting rid of stuttering with a lifetime guarantee of results for only 3 days!” There are no miracles. And those people who believe it and hope so, will be in for a rude awakening or even a resentment (it depends on a particular person`s attitude to things that happen in his life.)
Perhaps you would like to disagree with me, because you`ve seen some videos “before and after” from several sources. According to them people on the first day of the training sessions had a severe stuttering, but at the end of the third day their speech was quite normal and they could freely talk to the camera. Yes, I`ve seen such videos too. Moreover, I almost became one of such “cases” for some source. But I didn`t. And the reason of it was the fact that even at the end of the third day of these training sessions there were still lots of mistakes in my speech. Despite the fact that I corrected them, my speech could not be used as a visible result, as a motivation for other potential stutters who would like to use the services of this source. But at that very time I intuitively understood the direction in which I should move to reduce the amount of stuttering in my speech to a minimum. And I wish to note that after a week of using the necessary techniques, I achieved significant results.
So, I won`t be the first who make this statement, but I would notice that stuttering is not a disease (in the classical medical meaning of the word) and you have nothing to treat there. Probably, most of you already know this, but for those who haven`t realized it yet, I’ll make an explanation in detail. I`ll describe what the heart of the matter is. If you use the Internet and put the word “stuttering” in a search, the first thing you see in the search result will be its definition from Wikipedia. It says that stuttering is a “speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the person who stutters is unable to produce sounds”, according to ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases, tenth revision). Last time it was conducted in 1990. Eighteen years ago there were any well-known concrete successful solutions in the field of stuttering elimination and stuttering was treated as a completely unknown disease. So this “phenomenon” was just attributed to the medical illnesses. But this is fundamentally contrary to the record straight. If you think about it, you`ll see that when a man is alone with himself, he is always able to speak normally, without stupor, stammering and any sense of discomfort. But if he starts talking with somebody, he immediately begins to stutter. But it happens not always and not in all situations. Disease can`t behave like this, it can`t suddenly appear or disappear and depend on the surroundings.
Stuttering can be in part attributed to the wrong speech skill, when you are trying to say something distorting the normal technique. When you stutter, the priority is not given to “how to say” (naturally and at ease, with a sense of normal functioning of the speech organs), but it is given to” say in any way” (making an effort and just getting the words out of the mouth, trying to talk fast, to replace the words, to speed up or to slow down the speech rate and others “tricks”). One of the most important postulates in stuttering elimination is the understanding the fact that you always have a choice, you decide how to speak and pronounce words. It just seems like you can`t have a normal speech in some “terrible and stressful” for you situations. Like you can only pass the information with stuttering.
But absolutely in any situation you can talk without stuttering. You just need to understand how you should do it and do it exactly in this way. You shouldn`t ignore the thinking when you speak. First of all, you need to change your attitude to stuttering and to the problem in your mind, in general. There is no secret that in most cases, before speaking with stuttering, people feel fear. The reason of it is that they know that it can happen, so they begin to think ahead about this situation and its possible solutions (which are often incorrect and which look like stuttering symptoms). And instead of normal treating the situation when you need to talk, you have the ideas which periodically “push” you to stutter (to abnormal speech). In order to make any movement by any organ, a man needs to give to this process a mental command. And it can be done both consciously and unconsciously.
You need to understand what actually we call “stuttering”. We do stutter consciously, we give the commands to the tongue and to other muscles of the speech organs. It is we who are “conscious and oriented” articulate our own mouth. And it is not difficult to see that if you stutter, you do this articulation wrong. In general, if a man has this problem, a lot of things that he or she does are wrong. And in order to see, to understand all these mistakes, to know their origin, you need to work with your consciousness. Sometimes many of you speak well, sometimes no. And you think it depends on the mood, but that’s not the point. You need to work with the mind and to consolidate normal speech unconsciously. How much time you need to do this depends on the individual situation your own goals.
Good results in good conditions (at home, one-on-one with a specialist) are not the tip of the iceberg in understanding of the problem. There are a lot of opinions, but the real results are those when you don`t think about any speech “rules” and you accordingly think like a normal person before speaking and during it. You need to seek to achieve such results and move in this direction from the beginning. The main thing is to speak naturally. And to do this you need to control your feelings during speaking. Many experts advise to speak drawlingly, to emphasize the vowels in every word, to consider every word ahead and always to stop before saying complicated words and to emphasize their correct pronunciation. In this case, you would feel uncomfortable doing this, because you understand that normal people (who stutter) don`t do the same. But if it is not the guaranteed key to stuttering elimination, but it is the right path to solve the problem of stuttering. In general, the word “stuttering” is a wrong scientific term. Its definition and published decisions in this field haven`t been reconsidering since 1990. Since then, much has changed, and the attitude to this phenomenon is not an exception. Normal reasonable people understand that when we stutter, we don`t “hiccup”. There are no any convulsive muscle contractions which appear when a man hiccups. Everything we do, including the wrong creation of words (that is, well-known “stuttering”), we do consciously. But we should add that, for example, at home, when we are alone, we speak quite well. There is no even hint of fear or any discomfort, when we speak. Therefore, this problem appears only in society, but not always and not with everyone.
Everything depends on our confidence that we can say something in a way as we want, without fear and any unnatural to normal speech feelings. For that to happen, you need to realize a lot of things and only due to the positive practice get a better understanding of how to make your speech free from stuttering and efforts (the initial level, there are deviations from the norm), and then just speak naturally (there are no deviations, in the full sense of the word is free). People who stutter have been living with this problem for many years and it became their habit. Being in stressful situations, which can happen every day, they make some more or less serious mistakes in their speech. So knowing all this, this problem can`t be solved in a few days, whatever some people say and for which money they promise it.
In a few days you can launch the right process, and a man will be able to speak much better than before, for example, 80 per cent will sound normal. And then, moving in this direction he or she will consolidate it in the consciousness, which should be, first of all, changed to have a positive dynamic in solving this problem. Of course, it`s obviously that most of stutters seek to completely get rid of stuttering. But at the first stages people can have trouble doing this. And I`m not talking about the first days, I’m talking about even weeks. In general, the human body gets used to a new habit for at least 21 days. So it is not logical to get upset if during the first period, when just begin to solve the problem, you can’t handle it and sometimes you make such mistakes as, for example, speech stupor. There’s a time for everything. Diligence is the mother of success. And again, each patient is an individual. And this is one of the reasons why I don`t take the responsibility of publishing some “general” solutions for everyone. This problem is psychological, so for the most part, you need to work with your consciousness qualitative and make its level normal, using various instruments, techniques and images.
You are not able to do such an extensive work alone, but of course, you can try, if you know exactly what and how to do. When you choose a specialist to help you, take the time at the stage of agreement to find out, whether you will be able to feel comfortable trying to achieve speech improvement. If everything that can be promised you is just a movement towards speech without stuttering (if the “robotic” speech without stuttering will be considered as a norm), then I would not recommend this specialist.
I would say in conclusion, that the main criterion of your training will be the result, which you will verify in all possible situations for a long time. From the first training sessions you should be taught in such way that you will be able to speak with different people, not only with your teacher on private. If you are taught some slow speech and even if you don’t stutter speaking this way, hardly you will be able to put this knowledge into action, because from the outside this speech doesn’t sound normal. For the most part, stuttering is a psychological problem, when a man doesn’t understand how to create some words or phrases and this becomes the reason of his fear/anxiety/panic. When it is happening, a man is not sure that he will be able to say these words normally and in any convenient (!) way. A qualified specialist should understand all processes which go on in your head when you stutter and know all tools which will be the most effective for solving this problem. Apart from the fact that he should distinctly answer any your questions about stuttering, he should understand the necessity of gradual conduct of the work. There should be constant feedback and the consolidation of all materials you’ve successfully learned
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