I stutter, and I’ve done it for as long as I can remember. Anyone know how to beat it? I feel this has pretty significant (negative) effects on my life, because I’m often afraid of speaking up in a group, as stuttering is extremely embarrassing.
My only experience with stuttering was while I was recovering from post-stroke aphasia.
My speech therapist mostly suggested that every time I started to stutter I should stop trying to talk altogether, take a deliberate pause, and then concentrate on articulating… each… word… individually instead of letting my brain rush on ahead to the stuff I was about to say. Or, if that wasn’t enough, articulating each syllable.
That worked pretty well, though it replaced the stuttering with a kind of slow monotone speech that was also kind of embarrassing.
Fortunately for me, the brain damage was temporary, so after a few months of this I started being able to speak more smoothly again. (Toastmasters helped a lot with that part, as did improv theatre classes.)
I have no idea if the same sorts of techniques would work for a less acute form of stuttering, though it seems like they ought to.
Edit Oh, and the other thing that helped was getting enough sleep.
Most people with a stuttering problem are able to speak normally when speaking in unison with others. There are anti-stuttering devices based on this principle, which play the speaker’s own words back into their ear as they say them, which eliminates or dramatically reduces stuttering symptoms in a majority of those afflicted, while worn. Unfortunately, their price tends to run in the range of thousands of dollars, and they have no carryover effects when removed.
You may be interested in the Monster Study, which suggests that it’s your fear of embarassment and self-consciousness that actually causes the stuttering.
No, according to the New York Times, the Monster Study showed no effect of the intervention on stuttering. Telling children that they should worry about stuttering did cause them to act like stutterers (eg, refusing to talk), but it did not cause stuttering. Similarly, telling children not to worry about stuttering had no effect on their stuttering. It does not address whether it affected their nervousness.
I stutter and have done a lot of research on stuttering. It’s rare that adult stutterers ever completely stop stuttering, but these two ebooks are the best resources I know of for dealing with it:
I stutter, and I’ve done it for as long as I can remember. Anyone know how to beat it? I feel this has pretty significant (negative) effects on my life, because I’m often afraid of speaking up in a group, as stuttering is extremely embarrassing.
My only experience with stuttering was while I was recovering from post-stroke aphasia.
My speech therapist mostly suggested that every time I started to stutter I should stop trying to talk altogether, take a deliberate pause, and then concentrate on articulating… each… word… individually instead of letting my brain rush on ahead to the stuff I was about to say. Or, if that wasn’t enough, articulating each syllable.
That worked pretty well, though it replaced the stuttering with a kind of slow monotone speech that was also kind of embarrassing.
Fortunately for me, the brain damage was temporary, so after a few months of this I started being able to speak more smoothly again. (Toastmasters helped a lot with that part, as did improv theatre classes.)
I have no idea if the same sorts of techniques would work for a less acute form of stuttering, though it seems like they ought to.
Edit Oh, and the other thing that helped was getting enough sleep.
Most people with a stuttering problem are able to speak normally when speaking in unison with others. There are anti-stuttering devices based on this principle, which play the speaker’s own words back into their ear as they say them, which eliminates or dramatically reduces stuttering symptoms in a majority of those afflicted, while worn. Unfortunately, their price tends to run in the range of thousands of dollars, and they have no carryover effects when removed.
I’ve read that singing can allow people who stutter to speak relatively normally, since it uses a different part of the brain to normal speech.
You may be interested in the Monster Study, which suggests that it’s your fear of embarassment and self-consciousness that actually causes the stuttering.
No, according to the New York Times, the Monster Study showed no effect of the intervention on stuttering. Telling children that they should worry about stuttering did cause them to act like stutterers (eg, refusing to talk), but it did not cause stuttering. Similarly, telling children not to worry about stuttering had no effect on their stuttering. It does not address whether it affected their nervousness.
I stutter and have done a lot of research on stuttering. It’s rare that adult stutterers ever completely stop stuttering, but these two ebooks are the best resources I know of for dealing with it:
http://www.stutteringhelp.org/Portals/English/Book_0012_tenth_ed.pdf http://www.scribd.com/doc/23283047/Easy-Stuttering-Avoidance-Reduction-Therapy
The short version is that the less you try to suppress or conceal your stuttering the less severe it will become in the long run.