When I was 12 my parents sent me to a speech therapist due to my stutter. She said I should think about what I’m going to say, that I should speak sslllooowwlllyy and breeaathe. So I did. In her cabinet. During our meetings, I would naturally mimic her way of speaking to me and I wouldn’t stutter during those meetings. However, the moment I would close the doors of that cabinet, I would almost immediately go back to being a stutterer.
So I have kept stuttering since then. At different times it would change in intensity, but it never has went away completely. However, there is something I have come up with for myself that seems to be working rather well. When I remember to stick to the routine. And I don’t have to think about breathing and speaking slowly and I don’t sound like a robot to myself. It’s my speech, just stutter free. So, read on, I hope it helps someone else too.
For the vast majority of us stuttering is something our brain does. There’s nothing wrong whatsoever with our speech apparatus. It’s just that our brain constantly messes with ourselves and produces blocks that we then try to work around by finding different words, or twitching our eyes, stomping the ground or doing something else that at some point used to work.
The good news is that there is more and more evidence piling up that our brain is quite plastic. That is, it can be taught or ‘re-wired’ if you will. And one has to find a method to do it. It’s a bit like having some sort of AI running within your brain that is largely independent of you. In our case it is a tad faulty.
At least one person has cured a heavy stutter by doing magic mushrooms and spending hours hugging a tree and convincing himself that he won’t stutter anymore, and it worked. I didn’t feel like doing mushrooms after the video, but I did start to think about the topic.
I’m also interested in languages. While researching different language learning strategies I stumbled upon research outlining how inner voice can be used in language learning to improve the ability to speak a foreign language. Turns out actively practicing ‘speaking’ a foreign language in your inner voice facilitates the ability to generate actual speech in said language.
Do you stutter in your head?
I don’t. But when I started paying attention to it, I don’t actually speak to myself much either. My thoughts are generally something like: ‘I think the corr… sdffkjjg (and I ‘know’ the answer without spelling it out) But maybe I shoul…. sdf oijkl klsjd (and I have two alternatives ‘known’ to me already)’ So, I would start thoughts with words in my head, but they would always sort of slur off at the end, as the thought is already finished by then and a new one begins. I guess this is not surprising, as I don’t think anyone really narrates the whole thought process in their head. But, whereas this is just an amusing exercise to people who don’t stutter, it is actually important to stutterers.
Presumably the best way how to teach one’s brain how not to stutter is to produce stutter free speech. And you can produce as much stutter free speech as you want in your head. Chances are, your subconscious mind doesn’t even register that inner speech is not actually being pronounced.
So what I’ve been doing lately on and off is a two-pronged approach:
1. Simply telling myself from time to time that I’m not stuttering any more. That’s Paul Stamets’ method without mushrooms and drawn out over a longer time-span. The rationale is - the subconscious mind needs to know of that directive to act on it. It goes in line with things like practicing gratitude and the like.
2. Taking care to produce an actual coherent fully spelled out narrative of my thoughts in my inner voice as much as I can.
I’ve found that when I manage to do these two things consistently I stutter significantly less and the effects start pretty soon. Yes, I do speak considerably slower and I do take pauses, but those are just effects of speaking stutter free, I don’t focus on doing these things.
Hope this helps someone. Let me know in the comments if someone tries it!