Monday, April 11, 2011

How to Stop Stuttering - Be Able to Speak and Be Heard

Through the years I have noticed that many stutterers tend to grow attached subconsciously to their speech disorder and even start defying the mere possibility of getting rid of stuttering. In other cases, people believe that in order to stop stuttering, they need to use extremely complex techniques (the more complex, the better!) or take sophisticated drugs; the idea that speech fluency can be normalized by a treatment which is rather simple in itself but requires persistence and strong will from the individual is discounted as "uncomfortable" or even "foolish". Well, if being a "fool" is what it takes to stop stuttering and start communicating freely, then I prefer to remain the former.

The essence of my method is to focus on and eliminate the cause of stuttering - I believe that simplicity is key to a successful treatment. I have found out that almost all people who stutter have weak throat muscles, because they are not used properly. This can be fixed with certain exercises. At the same time, the method is intended to give confidence in oneself and remove the fear towards speaking by using imperatives and commands, which is another important component of the problem.

Moreover, there are several factors which support your stuttering and which need to be fixed in order to solve the problem. For example, you've definitely felt that the emotion of fear has a direct relation to stuttering; indeed, fear and nervousness are the main triggers of stuttering. They form a vicious circle, which technical disciplines call "positive feedback": the more the person is afraid of stuttering, the more he/she stutters. Continuously receiving such negative emotions, the person gradually grows afraid of speaking as such! Speech exercises are not effective enough to break this cycle.

The method is based largely on individual work, which implies persistence and a strong desire to succeed. To ensure this, I am in constant contact with every user of the method, since the lack of personal support has proven to be one of the most frequent causes of people giving up on the treatment on how to stop stuttering.

The method has showed to increase speech fluency by up to 90%. This means that after the full course the person may not be able to become a news anchor or an air controller (i.e. the occupations where "100%" speech fluency is required), yet the stuttering is going to be reduced to a level which cannot be distinguished from a non-stutterer. The method has proven efficient in different situations, yet the length of the treatment tends to increase with the initial level of stuttering.

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