I Have a Voice Read online

  If you’re someone who stutters and are motivated to experiment with and explore your own stuttering, you’ll also find this book a great resource. You’ll acquire workable tools for modifying your mind and emotional states. This, in turn, will help you to counter the feelings of helplessness which are so disempowering and which can make speaking such a troubling experience.

  Enterprising individuals who wish to run their own self-therapy program using neuro-semantics resources can be reassured they do not have to go it alone. Thanks to Linda Rounds, who serves as moderator, there is an Internet discussion group on Yahoowhere you can share your personal experiences using the principles and precepts described in this book. If you want to participate, you can register at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/neurosemanticsofstuttering. You will also have an opportunity to participate in some of the most intelligent discussions of stuttering-related issues found anywhere on the Internet.

  A clarification of terms

  Finally, a few observations about the word “stuttering.” Although stuttering is a commonly used word, it unfortunately contributes to the confusion because “stuttering” means too many different things.

  People who have advanced cases of Parkinsons and who talk in a halting or jerky manner are often referred to as stuttering.

  Young children who find themselves linguistically over their head might be labeled as stuttering, even though their speech may be effortless and without any attendant struggle behavior.

  Anyone who finds himself upset, confused, uncertain, embarrassed or discombobulated may also have stretches of dysfluency, even though it is totally unself-conscious. I call this bobulating to distinguish this form of dysfluency from that in which the individual is momentarily blocked and unable to say a word.

  Then there is blocking. Without a speech block, there will be no helplessness, frustration, embarrassment, and feelings of disempowerment. The speech block sits at the center of the problem and should not be confused with other kinds of dysfluency.

  For reasons of clarity, we encourage people to use the word “blocking” when talking about their speech difficulties. But many remain wedded to the word “stuttering” and are not apt to easily give it up. This is understandable. It’s a familiar and commonly used word, and old habits die hard. Consequently, throughout this book, you will see references to the compound word “blocking/stuttering” to distinguish this kind of dysfluency from more general and non-disabling garden varieties of stuttering.

  Go at your own pace

  A word about the book as a whole. You are not encouraged consume it in one or two sittings. There is too much to think about and too many different processes to absorb in a short time. Rather, it is a reference book rich in understanding and chock full of tools and techniques that can help you get to the heart of you or your client’s blocking behaviors and issues. So sip it a bit at a time, live with the information, try out the processes with your clients or with yourself, and if you’re someone who stutters, share your thoughts and experiences on the Yahoo group with others of like mind.

  Remember that blocking/stuttering is a complex system, and while a person’s speech habits substantially contribute to their blocking, their world their view and their habits of thought and perception are likely to be major contributors to the stuttering system and also need to be addressed.

  Finally, be prepared for a series of “ah-hah” experiences as you explore blocking/stuttering in a new light and make powerful discoveries about the nature of stuttering and what it takes to recover.

  BIOGRAPHY

  John C. Harrison showed a marked dysfluency at the age of three and two years later underwent limited therapy. But these efforts were unsuccessful and he ultimately struggled with stuttering throughout college and well into adulthood. Then, in his 20s he immersed himself in a broad variety of personal growth programs, which gave him a unique insight into the nature and dynamics of the stuttering person. As a result, he has been fully recovered for the last 35 years and no longer deals with a stuttering problem.

  One of the earliest members of the National Stuttering Association, Harrison was an 18-year member of the Board of Directors and spent nine years as the editor of Letting GO, the NSA’s monthly newsletter. He has run workshops for the stuttering and the professional communities across the US and Canada as well as in Ireland, the UK, and Australia. He has been published in Advance Magazine and the Journal of Fluency Disorders and has presented at conventions of the American Speech Language Hearing Association and the California Speech Language Hearing Association, as well as at the First World Congress on Fluency Disorders in Munich, Germany.

  Harrison lives with his wife in San Francisco where he works as a presentation coach, speaker, and freelance writer. He also coaches people by phone on how to investigate, understand and transform the system that creates and maintains their stuttering system.

  Introduction

  I did not plan to work with people who block and stutter. Indeed, it happened quite by accident. Some years ago, a sales seminar participant asked me if I could help people who stutter. I told him that I didn’t know, but I sure would be glad to give it a try. His son, Charles, then twenty-five, came in for a two hour session. After one hour’s work we discovered that behind his blocking and stuttering were some fears of speaking that were rooted in childhood. Once he realized that he was mentally causing the stutter, he thanked me, paid me and left. And as far as I know, he gained complete fluency. The key for him was understanding that he was creating the stuttering, that it was neither something physical nor out of his control.

  I have been working as a practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) since 1990. A major component of my work has been in dealing with fears, anxiety and phobias. Over those 14 years I have worked with hundreds of clients – approximately three thousand hours of therapy. NLP offers a model for understanding and for changing the way someone makes meaning of their experience, based on how they perceive their world in terms of language, thoughts, states and behaviors. NLP offers effective techniques which can be used widely: in therapy, sales, management, relationships, and, yes, for dealing with stuttering and much more. You will learn more about how change happens as the book unfolds.

  Excited about the results with Charles, I wrote up a case study of the therapy and sent it to my colleague Michael Hall. He expanded this case study into an article, “Meta-Stating Stuttering: Approaching Stuttering Using NLP and Neuro-Semantics”, which I then posted on our website:

  http://www.neurosemantics.com/Articles/Stuttering.htm

  After posting the article, I was contacted by a friend of mine whom I had worked with early in my practice. We had worked on his stuttering years earlier but that hadn’t helped him. After reading the article he called me and asked me if I had learned something new. I told him that I sure had and for him to come on over. Six months after our one hour session I saw him again and asked him how the stuttering was. He paused briefly, wrinkled his brow, and replied, “I guess I have forgotten to stutter.” “Well,” I said, “that sure is a great thing to forget to do.”

  Needless to say, I was elated with that outcome. However, the major breakthrough came in the spring of 2002 when Linda Rounds emailed me from Indiana. In her search to overcome her stuttering she had read a work by Anthony Robbins at the recommendation of John Harrison. From Anthony Robbins she learned about NLP, so she searched Amazon.com for NLP books and found the book I co-authored with Michael Hall, The User’s Manual for the Brain. From that she obtained my email address and wrote to ask me if I could assist her. In just a few therapy sessions on the phone and via some emails, Linda gained complete fluency. Wow, was I excited. As a result, Linda and I wrote an article entitled “From Stuttering to Stability: A Case Study.” John Harrison published the article in the National Stuttering Association newsletter, Letting Go. I have included the complete article in Appendix B.

  Because of this article I have had the opportunity to work with several People Wh
o Stutter (PWS), including the speech pathologist Tim Mackesey, SLP (Speech Language Pathologist). It was somewhat ironic to assist to fluency a speech pathologist who had blocked and stuttered most of his life. Tim is now using my techniques in his own practice near Atlanta, Georgia, working with people who block and stutter.

  Tim’s website is: www.stuttering-specialist.com.

  Let me say up front that not everyone has attained fluency but many have. Importantly, out of all the people I have worked with, I am confident that all of them have the capacity to attain fluency eventually, just so long as they continue working on their thinking.

  Chapter One

  The Origins of Stuttering

  How blocking begins

  In every case I have worked with, the roots of the individual’s blocking are in childhood. Sometimes however, the actual blocking does not appear until adolescence or even adulthood. People who block usually refer to their non-fluency as blocking or stuttering (stammering in the UK). In itself, this is no problem. It is when they come to believe that blocking is something bad and to be feared that problems arise.

  CASE STUDY 1

  Susan was very angry with her parents because she believed that if they had not gotten all upset about her childhood problem of learning how to speak, then she would not have started blocking and stuttering. I encouraged Susan to speak with her mother about it. Here is Susan’s reply:

  Well I did it! I spoke to my mom about my stuttering and it was not bad. I actually feel some peace. It is not complete, but better. I was afraid to talk to her but I did. We talked about stuttering openly but we didn’t talk about the touchy-feely stuff. I said I’d been very angry and explained how the work I do sometimes increases my feeling of anger because I think she could have behaved better. I was able to show empathy and to see it through her eyes. I think my parents did try a lot of things and I don’t think it was in the vengeful way that I always see. I think the way I chose to see things is definitely holding me back.

  My mother was OK with this talk and actually supportive. I told her that I feel she still has feelings of embarrassment about my stuttering and she said, “I don’t worry about you, in my eyes you have made it, you are successful living a life and that’s all we wanted for you.” That was a shock to hear. Maybe I don’t get that I have already arrived in some ways in the work that I have done. I think I have refused to see that. I also realized that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life talking about my stuttering – there is more to life. I think I am too attached to my stuttering.

  Sometimes I think it is a way to shield myself from my true feelings and relations to people. You are so busy thinking and being obsessed with stuttering that you don’t need to think about your feelings, it is a good feeling blocker. John Harrison said it is so much about feelings and not about stuttering. I never understood that before.

  Susan’s story is typical of People Who Stutter (PWS). Her story illustrates the theme of this book: that stuttering is a learned behavior, and, as such, can be unlearned. However, much speech therapy in the United States addresses the symptoms rather than the cause, the physical components of blocking and stuttering and not the underlying meanings that the person has given to blocking and stuttering.

  Childhood experiences

  In that the origins of blocking and stuttering arise from emotional hurts experienced during childhood, the PWS is no different from the other people who seek my assistance. They all demonstrate a similar structure of learned negative associations which they are unable to control consciously. Although it is possible that a child has some kind of disfluency as a result of genetic defects, it ismore likely that their disfluency is just the normal stumbling with words as the child learns how to speak. However, should a parent or significant other adult think that the child has a speech problem, the child is told that they stutter and off to the speech pathologist they go. This confirms to the child that there is something unacceptable about their speech, and something wrong or unacceptable about them.

  I have yet to find a person who fell in love with their stuttering. If every time they experience difficulty speaking they think of this as something bad, then over time this badness becomes a habit, and they generalize that badness to themselves. One question you could ask is “How do you know this is bad? Who told you?” The knowledge that their speech is abnormal usually comes from a parent or significant other person pointing out that there is something wrong with how they speak. (However, I have found a few people who block and stutter who placed the “bad” and “unacceptable” label on themselves without any knowledge of outside influences.)

  Susan is a good example of this. She thinks that being dragged to a speech pathologist solidified her perception that she was flawed in some way, and that she had to be “perfect” in speech in order for her mother and father to like her.

  Children who block describe non-fluency as something they wish to avoid or control. They may have reached their own conclusion on this, or based it on what adults or their peers have said. In addition, their blocking is connected to the negative emotions which accompanied some earlier painful experiences associated with not being fluent in speech. Many times the PWS will describe their experiences as being traumatic. Having friends mock you, or school teachers embarrassed because of how you speak can also “lock in the block.” Indeed, when a teacher stands a child up before a class and shouts “Spit it out!”, for the child who is trying to talk but can’t, it is trauma.

  The precipitating event may not be something terrible or tragic; the child may have interpreted the divorce of the parents, the lack of affection from dad, the lack of emotional support from mom, or any emotional and physical abuse as being painful and threatening. The child does what all children tend to do – they personalize the external problems, assume some degree of responsibility, and then internalize and express the hurt in the muscles used for breathing/speaking. They begin to block.

  Blocking is also connected with feelings of helplessness in not being able to speak when required to. This leads to feeling that you are different or strange – something children wish to avoid at all cost. From these childhood experiences the child learns that blocking and stuttering is unacceptable behavior, and grows up fearing that they will continue to block. The fear itself creates even more blocking and stuttering. Essentially, the PWS “becomes that which they fear most.”

  This book is includes ways of identifying those painful emotions and suggests means of healing them.

  The concept of self

  Aperson’s concept of self grows and changes throughout their lifetime. It is first formalized by their caregivers who named them and began to relate to them as a separate individual. The child needs a firm foundation of how the world works. During their early years they do not critically filter incoming information because they have yet to develop the ability to think about, reflect on or question their experience. Instead, what they learn in childhood becomes their truth – and that proves both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes the child gets hold of the wrong end of the stick, as it were, when making meaning of their own behaviors, and that meaning may endure. The blocking then persists because the PWS continues to think in a “childish” way: the meaning of their behavior still relates to those early years experiences.

  The same is true for practically all emotional problems that adults have. The issues I deal with therapeutically come from thinking patterns the clients learned in childhood. Allowing other people to determine your concept of self is appropriate when you are a young child, but not desirable as you mature. One solution to this problem is to get the PWS to grow up those parts of themselves which are stuck in childhood. The person first needs to practice mentally stepping back so that they may critically examine the beliefs they have carried with them since childhood. They use their adult mind to notice how they have constructed their model of the world, the beliefs that enable them to function, and then to update any which are obsolete.

  One of the mos
t debilitating beliefs of a PWS is their claim to know how other people perceive them. Yet they never check the truth or accuracy of such claims. I have discovered with people who block that the typical self-definition they received from others is based on mind-reading: they believe that other people view them as weird, dumb, different, mentally retarded, and so on. They take this on board, assume this information is accurate, and then live as if those self-descriptions are true. In their fear of being judged by others, they are in fact themselves unfairly judging others.

  The Body-Mind connection

  This connection is obvious in the most primitive of all mind-body functions, the fight/flight arousal pattern. You don’t have to be in actual danger to set it off. Simply remember or imagine something fearful and your body will respond by producing adrenalin. We find linguistic evidence of the connection in the expressions: gut feeling, pain in the neck, heartfelt, get things off your chest, and so on.

  Those early negative influences concerning the child’s speech become grooved into the child’s muscles and are carried into adulthood. By “grooved into the muscles” I refer to someone’s ability to learn unconsciously; it is as though what we learn literally becomes embodied into our muscle tissue (referred to as muscle memory). For example, if you touch-type, and I ask you where the R key is, how will you locate it? Did your left index finger twitch and move up to the left? That would be an example of “in the muscle” learning.