Stuttering Hub

Don't You Just Hate These Two Things?

Hate? What things, you might ask? Well, you’re having a conversation with someone. You get into a block... you're just about to get through it... and the peron you are talking with ends it for you! What’s even more frustrating? When what the do-gooder :-)  blurts out what they thought you were about to say! But for all the people who stammer out there, please don’t despair. Even ‘fluent’ people end the words and sentences of other ‘fluent’ people when talking. I think it must just be a general impatience thing going on with some people. Or that we all think we are so smart that we know exactly what is going on in each other’s heads!

My other real pet peeve is when people you are talking with tell you to slow down when speaking, and take a breath! As if that is going to stop the stammering! Yeah, right! Like they know what a person is going through when stuttering! Don’t get me wrong, while slowing your speaking rate and breathing  properly can help;  but, when a person who really doesn’t know what they are talking about gives such advice, I really want to tell them to keep their words of wisdom to themselves!

 

A Note From John

John Carling a good friend of mine sent me a letter a while ago. John has some strong views about stammering that he would like to share with you all. He discussed in his letter how Stammering Associations and Self-Help organisations around the world tend to focus primarily on certain therapeutic techniques and schools of thought, which are not enough to meet the needs of many people who stammer. He also talked about the need for harder campaigns on real issues that affect the lives and health of people who stammer. One aspect he mentioned was the need for more awareness on the mental health aspects associated with stammering, and the need to consider the psychological and emotional factors. Things are changing with models such as cognitive behavioural therapy and neuro-linguistic programming being used more by therapists. I do agree that spirituality can be very beneficial. The challenge is however, that people have different spiritual beliefs, others may have none. Therefore, developing a "spiritual therapeutic model" would be far more difficult. One thing is certain however, and John has demonstrated this, which is that everyone is entitled to cope with stammering in whatever ways helps them.

A Technique to Remove Unwanted Thoughts

I picked up a great technique while in Alaska. Originally developed by Dr Bob Bodenhamer, I've adapted it as follows:

1. Think of some negative thought that really gets you in a bad state. It could be an image where you normally stammer in a particular situation, experience a lot fear or pain etc. Note where you see this image on the screen of your mind. Is the image in front of your field of vision?  Is it down low?  How close is it to your face?

2. Keeping your head level, get another image of one of your 'higher' beliefs (e.g. God, spirit, the universe, love, peace etc). If you can get this image so that it is high in the air on the screen of your mind, then all the better.

3. Now the fun bit! Keeping your head level and with your eyes move the negative image up and 'give it' to the image of your 'higher' belief. Move the negative image up so that the negative image merges with the higher resource image.

4. Enjoy the experience of the negative image being completely transformed, eliminated etc J

 

Stammering Research Help

Friends, if you get a chance please assist Lucy with her project:

I am a fourth year university student studying speech and language therapy.  I have an interest in stammering and hope to specialise in this area once qualified.  As part of my degree I am conducting a research project looking at the difficulties faced by young people who stammer and their parents.  I hope that this project will inform the speech and language therapy service as to what can be done to improve the service provided to help people with a stammer.  You do not have to have had speech therapy to participate.

I am looking for parents of adolescents who stammer and adolescents aged 11 to 19 who stammer themselves to complete a short questionnaire to help me with my research.  All of the information will be confidential and no identifying information will be included.   If you are interested in volunteering or would just like more information please email me at lucy.culliford@email.dmu.ac.uk and I will contact you.

Many thanks

Lucy Culliford

End of British Summer Time

So what, some of you may ask? Well it does have one key benefit. An extra hour's sleep. I must admit I did enjoy my extra hour of snooze. So much so, that I left my clock on one hour ahead, so that I could dwell in the knowing that when it said 8:30 am this morning, I knew that it was actually  7:30 am. It felt soo good! So that's the key benefit.

What else? Well, I guess when sometimes the moon will be shining brightly and magically in the darkness, which is quite special. Are there any others? Not for me there aren't. Why? Well, because it means that it's really dark early in the mornings when people are off to work. And it means that it's pitch black when people are coming back from work. Really exciting. NOT. Of course, it gets better. Not only does it get more darker, but it gets colder. This is even more exciting. Yeah, right! Mind you, these are only my own opinions. Some of you may find other advantages of the clocks going back. If so, let us know...

Reflections

I remember one time, when I was at university and we had to do a group presentation on a particular topic. We had to talk about cell biology to a group of other students and a couple of lecturers. I remember dreading it. My anxiety levels were increasing by the second and I gave in to the fear. I wanted to get out of talking because I believed I would block. I convinced one of the other guys in my group to do my share of the talking. He didn't really want to do it either, as he was pretty nervous but the poor guy ended up doing it. As he began to speak, his uneasiness started to become apparent. His presentation was full of pauses, 'ums' and 'ers'. And he wasn't what I would consider to be a person who stammers either. What did this experience teach me? That my judgment that 'fluent' people had no problem communicating was totally false. Many people experience anxiety and fear about communicating in different contexts. I like to remind myself more of this, these days.

Thanks for your Help

Hi Friends. A friend of mine needs your assistance for an important piece of research she is carrying out. Many thanks!

She sent me the following message:

Online survey on impact of stammering in the workplace. 

 

Hello.  My name is Melissa Seymour and I am a person who stammers.  If you are a over 18 years of age and have a stammer, I would be very grateful if you could spare approximately 20 minutes to fill in the online questionnaire.

The survey, which will run until the end of November 2008, is being conducted as part of my research project for a Masters degree course with the Open University. The research is looking at the impact that stammering may have on one's working life and career prospects and whether this may be mediated by perceptions of self-worth.

To take part in this survey, please link to <a href=http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=d98JXYs8gjL6Dcbz7dz7xQ_3d_3d

If you wish to have a copy of the results when they become available, please contact me at mjs482@student.open.ac.uk

I'm Back

Hi All. I'm back from my trip to the States. Actually, I was in Alaska for an advanced training course in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). I will discuss the use of NLP in a future post. My trip to the 'Last Frontier', however, was absolutely brilliant. I saw majestic snowy mountains that seemed to be never ending, along with big, fast rushing rivers. I felt the glorious peace of being surrounded by gigantic glaciers, only to be interrupted by the sound of enormous rocks of ice, crashing into the sea. The wildlife was straight out of a Sir David Attenborough BBC documentary. Among other things, I witnessed Killer Whales hunting a Porpoise, saw powerful Bald Eagles, and enjoyed seeing a herd of Sea Lions on a small island. The food was both hearty in portion and delicious in taste. Sea food, unsurprisingly, was the regional speciality, and I sampled very tasty halibut and equally good salmon. I have to admit that the Alaskans could give the Brits a run for their money in terms of quality fish and chips! I had many interesting and unforgettable experiences in Alaska. I will share some of these in future posts.

I'll be Back

Friends, I'm off this weekend to the States. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, (maybe not) but how much do I dread packing? I spent nearly a week getting my stuff together - passport, tickets, and of course, my toothbrush, as well as other bits and bobs. But the whole effort and time that packing essentials needs, sometimes it gets me wondering - this trip really better be worth it!

Anyway, enough of my moaning! Take care, and I'll catch you folks in three weeks time.  

Relapse After Treatment

I was thinking the other day how the road to overcoming stammering can be a bumpy one, full of different emotions - frustration, other times hopeful, helpless in some situations, while being confident on other occasions. Relapse, where a person goes back to stammering, and other associated behaviours, particularly after a person has undergone some form of speech therapy, can be a shocking and frustrating. Maybe this is what you experienced? However is there a way to look at this situation more positively? You may have been stammering for five, ten years, or perhaps your whole life. You have picked up certain behaviours along the way. You are now learning new ways to do things. Things may seem different. Things may seem a bit weird. Yes, you may have relapses, you will make mistakes. It's perfectly normal to do so. If we never made any mistakes, we would never learn anything new. Sometimes we learn things quickly, other times more slowly. Patience is important. When learning new behaviours and ways of doing things, it can seem that we are not making much progress. However, a little reflection after sometime usually reveals just how much we did learn.