At Least I Didn't Wait a Full Three Months

My motivation for finally getting something posted here was several people actually telling me that they've been looking every once in awhile and there hasn't been any updates. Thanks for the little shove.

This post won't make total sense unless you've read my previous couple of posts (and even then, I won't guarantee that it does...).

I came to a conclusion. Before I get to said conclusion, I'll recap how I reached it. During the end of the summer in therapy, while I was working on the repetitions (see previous posts), my clinician called me out on something. She told me that she could guess, quite accurately, which words I was going to use a voluntary repetition on. This struck as not-so-good because it looked like I was falling into a pattern rather than just randomly choosing words.

That pattern was me subconsciously avoiding words that I could not stre-ehhhhhhhh-tch out the sound, but that, because of the nature of their sound, could only repeat them. Here, you folks at home, give this a shot: Choose a letter and make that letter's sound for several seconds. Try it with any of the following: w, r, l, n, m, y. You can keep your mouth in one position and keep making the same sound until you run out of breath (or until someone slaps you on the back of your head). Now try the same thing with some of these letters: b, d, g, t. As soon as you make the initial sound, it's done. Extending it is just some superfluous vowel sound and not the sound anymore that actually classifies it as that letter's sound. The wwwwwwater is d-d-d-down nnnnnext to the b-b-b-boat. I can do the w and n just fine but the d and b cause me to struggle.

So the conclusion that I came to through all of this is that I'm still avoiding the sounds that demand repetitions and focusing on what comes easier - prolongating the sounds instead. For Halloween, I think I'll dress up like a repetition, since there's apparently nothing more frightening.

Sometimes while reading aloud in therapy I'll try to use repetitions on all the b words just because for some reason the bah-bah-bah sound is much harder for me to do. It frequently doesn't work out as planned and I'll kind of freeze up on the sound, but sometimes it goes just fine. I have no idea why. Also, I must say, whoever thinks it's a good idea to put two b words in a row can go straight to hell, the barbaric bastards.

Something W-w-w-icked This Way Comes

This post ties in well with this one.

Because it's done at a university, a year of therapy for me consists of three different periods of time - Fall semester, Spring Semester, and June and July during the Summer session. During this past Spring Semester, for the first time, I started really playing a more direct role in making changes to my therapy. I've always had a say, and I've always been ok with what we were doing, but this time we (my clinician and I) worked and we changed things based on what I said.

We worked hard at the end of Spring semester and into the Summer because I felt I was moving towards the verge of somewhere good and I needed to get the details of what we were doing hammered out before the end of the Summer. When the Fall semester starts, I'll be getting a new clinician and I wanted a therapy plan in place that I felt good about and one that was explained thoroughly enough to be clear as to what we were doing and what my goals were.

We developed a plan to talk about certain topics, topics that are important to me and/or affect me emotionally. After having a conversation about such a topic I would then talk about how I thought my anxiety level was, how I thought the setting affected me, and how much I thought I struggled throughout the conversation. The idea was that talking about these things would help us to figure out if there were any correlations to the topic, my emotional state, outside influences, etc. On top of that, it was going to be a time where I could practice talking about those hardest of subjects, feel what's going on inside me at those times (fear), figure out where it's coming from (What am I afraid of and why?), and try to change it (get rid of the fear). In my head, this was going to be the new centerpiece of my therapy and this would carry into the Fall semester with my new clinician.

Then after working on this for a few weeks, we started trying something else in therapy, besides the conversations and discussions I just mentioned. I don't remember what exactly started it, maybe it was the Dairy Queen blog post that I linked to at the start of this post, but in any case... I knew I couldn't force myself to use natural repetitions in my speech because I would subconsciously use tremendous energy to avoid them. Well instead, I gave it a shot while reading aloud to my clinician. The theory was that this would be much easier for two reasons. First, because I don't stutter much while reading - so instead of adding repetitions as well as my normal struggling, I'm just dealing with adding repetitions. Second, because of the nature of reading, I can see exactly what's coming up and periodically choose to repeat a word.

The first few times reading aloud with repetitions were very uncomfortable and I felt really stupid doing it and I also felt an irrational feeling that what I was doing was wrong. Because I felt that way, I was shocked at how fast the uncomfortable feeling subsided. I remember that at one point during one of the first readings, after it started getting easier, I got a little smirk on my face. The smirk was actually me holding back laughter. If I hadn't kept it in, it would have been the kind of laughter that is raw and emotion filled. Like when you're waiting for something really bad to happen, it doesn't happen, and then you realize it's not going to. Happiness was certainly a main proponent of the emotion, but far from the only one. Relief, a major feeling of liberation, and maybe a smidge of "This is all it took? I could have done this years ago." were all present too.

After that, the repetitions in reading had gotten much easier and so we moved to bigger and better things, i.e. a more public place. We sat in a computer lab (although not a very busy one) with me reading a news article aloud to my clinician while other people were around (although not all that close). After a few sessions of that, we modified it a bit so that after reading a short article we would then talk about the article while I continued the repetitions, i.e. trying to make a transition from the repetitions in reading, which were now easy, to the repetitions in casual conversation which I had never been able to accomplish. It was very hard to make myself incorporate repetitions into that speech, but I was able to manage to get a few.

During this time I also read aloud a few times at home to my wife. The first time, this was very uncomfortable and I read for several minutes before I was able to bring myself to toss in a repetition. The next time we did it, it wasn't so bad and I ended up reading about the exploits of Scarlett and the gang for nearly a half an hour.

Back in therapy we decided to take it a little further and walk through campus and casually talk while I would use repetitions instead of struggle, i.e. when I felt like I was going to start to fight to get words out, I would instead (in theory!) just use repetitions in place of the struggle. The first session of doing this I still struggled quite a lot and didn't do a very good job at getting the repetitions in there. The second time was much more successful and was a large improvement in the number of repetitions I was able to use while being out-and-about.

So the therapy I explained near the start of this post, with the three categories, I said I had planned on it being the new centerpiece...well now I feel even stronger that this, these repetitions are the true centerpiece that everything else must be built upon. There are a number of things I've done in therapy so far that I've felt good about at some levels, but I could not fathom how they would ever translate into positive improvements in my everyday speech. Now I've realized that many, if not all, of these things (including the "three categories" idea discussed earlier) should be re-looked at and re-evaluated later in my therapy, at a time when I would be able to properly use them to help my everyday speech. It's not that any of these things were bad or worthless, I just wasn't ready for them yet.

So the wickedness coming this way are the repetitions that I feared 20+ years ago and have since built all of my struggling speech habits on top of.

My Ears are Proud and Collision is Such an Ugly Sound

"Every minute is arranged, every moment lasts a day. Thinking about it can't help me let go, I know." -- Jim Adkins, Jimmy Eat World

So I was thinkin'...when I do these quote posts, maybe I should write up an explanation. I first thought about doing this when my clinician asked me to explain why I had chosen the last quote. After I ended up talking about it for about twenty minutes I realized I had a lot to say about it.

Like poetry, song lyrics can usually be interpreted in many different ways. Sometimes you can find meaning in just a single phrase that may mean something totally different when looked at with the other words around it or when heard by someone else. What I'm saying is, this quote is most likely taken way out of context, but really, who cares? It means something meaningful to me (even if the song has some lame "ha ha ha's" in it.).

The first part is just simply about how most people don't realize the vast amounts of pre-stuttering preparation that goes into making an eye-twitching, facial-contorting, no-sound-coming-out-while-everyone-waits, overall freakish moment not just good, but great. (That's one of those "laughing at myself on the outside and crying on the inside" type of sentences, but really, don't worry, it's more laughing than crying.)

The second part is about how I think about things all the time and analyze everything until every angle is thought about. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes it's just an exercise that helps me pretend like I'm getting somewhere when I'm actually not doing a damn thing. But to keep this strictly about speech production - it's good that I think about my speech and everything entailed in that, but at some point it needs to lead to action if any real changes are going to be made. And not just action, but me letting go, not caring what other people think, realizing my fears and overcoming the irrational ones. Another quote from the same song ties in well with this: "Gotta love how it's somehow all on me." I have people who are willing to help me and have put a lot of effort into helping me, but it all comes down to me (as well it should and as well it has to). That's something else I have to deal with.

The title of this post is actually a line from the song too. "Collision" is obviously my total struggle while trying to talk. While I'm obviously used to the way I talk, it's still no fun having to go through it all the time. And since I am a fan of brutal honesty, I won't cringe at calling my struggling ugly. I should just be glad it's just my ears I have to deal with and not my eyes too.

After reading through this, it may come across as negative, but fear not! I like where I am right now.

Two Stutterers and a Speech Therapist Walk into a Dairy Queen...

Time slides by quickly
Letting it pass is easy
Seizing it is hard

This month the stuttering group was lightly attended. There were three of us there: Barry* the speech therapist, Mick* the life-long stutterer, and me. We talked for awhile and then watched a short video with information and interviews about the Monster Study. After that, Barry wanted me to try something. He wanted me to try to speak more carelessly so that instead of the tension, words would come out with the normal type of repetitions that everyone makes in their speech. I’m certain that he wasn’t expecting fabulous results, but it could help to show me some examples of speaking without trying so hard. As I’ve experienced in therapy, when I start speaking with the idea of replacing tension with repetitions, no tension or repetitions come out, only normal sounding speech. I explained this to Barry, saying that when I get told to just let the repetitions happen, I usually speak just fine. Barry disagreed. He asked me if I was trying hard at times like that. I only needed a moment of thought before I said that yes, I was trying hard, very hard. He said that what I was doing was producing normal sounding speech while still struggling inside and backing myself up against a wall. We talked about that a little more and then, since there were only three of us, we headed to Dairy Queen. While there we talked some more and Mick and I tried to keep Barry from making a scene, which he probably does a lot when he’s not properly supervised (Anyone who knows Barry, knows exactly what I mean.).

It wasn’t until the next morning that I made some connections with what Barry had said the evening before. His mention of “backing myself up against a wall” was something that I had done over twenty years prior. After I had been in speech therapy as a child for awhile for non-stuttering issues, my mom had reported to my speech therapist that I was stuttering at home. The therapist blew her off and said that she was not seeing anything in the therapy so not to worry about it. What I undoubtedly was doing was trying really hard in therapy to speak without any errors. Sometime during that period I became aware of my imperfect speech and afraid of making errors, even errors that are completely normal for a six-year old and errors that no one would even really notice. Now, jump back ahead to my current (s)peachy predicament - anytime I’ve been asked to purposefully have normal repetitions it feels very uncomfortable and just plain wrong. If I’m asked to just let repetitions happen as they naturally would, I unconsciously try very hard not to have them, and back myself into that wall - the wall being the tension and secondary behaviors that I have today. I might be able to speak error-free for awhile if I try really hard, but at some point, simply trying hard won’t be good enough, which leads to trying harder with limited results, which leads to trying harder still with even worse results, etc. After awhile I’m left with facial tension, closed eyes, and the rest of the craptacularly abnormal things I do while trying to force my speech.

In summation, it is my subconscious and irrational belief that normal speech repetitions are the root of all evil. I should really get over that.

*The names have been changed to protect the innocent, or in Barry’s case, the not-so-innocent.

Unassailable

"So tell me it’s okay. Tell me anything, or show me there’s a pull, unassailable, that will lead you there, from the dark, alone, to benevolence that you’ve never known, or you knew when you were four and can’t remember. Where a small knife tears out those sloppy seams, and the silence knows what your silence means, and your metaphors (as mixed as you can make them) are linked, like days, together." -- John K. Sampson, The Weakerthans

I Want to Hear What You Have to Say

Open up your mouth
Say whatever you're thinking
Screw other people
I attend a monthly stuttering group where stutterers, parents of stutters, speech therapists, and students get together to talk about their problems, fears, and questions. At this month's meeting there was one specific speech therapist who I was particularly interested in absorbing everything I could from. He is a life-long stutterer who you would not even guess ever stuttered. He would be what any adult stutterer would look at and listen to and say "That's exactly what I want to be like." I had heard him talk at another gathering of our group many months prior. I knew that I could relate the things he said directly to me and my therapy. Not just "could relate", but "needed to relate"; our adult therapy stories were similar enough that I knew I could gain a lot from hearing his insights.

The conversation had lingered and it was almost half an hour past the scheduled ending time for the meeting. A different speech therapist had been talking about something that I had a question about that I really wanted to ask. People were shifting around and getting ready to leave. As soon as she was done talking I started to try to ask my question at the same time as the standard end-of-a-long-gathering din began, people getting up to leave, several people talking at once. The only sound I created was a fairly inaudible noise that was me trying to start my question alongside the commotion. The speech therapist had half turned and didn't see or hear me. My face was undoubtedly distorted as I tried to force my question out. And then, what happened in the next few moments, I will never forget.

"I'm listening, Torey."

I glanced up towards the person who had spoken so sincerely. The speech therapist, the one who stuttered, the one who knew exactly how I felt at that moment, was staring at me as earnestly as he had spoken. I tried again, and again was unsuccessful. Though there was no blame to be laid anywhere, the rest of the people seemed oblivious to my struggle.

He spoke again, a little bit louder, and again in all sincerity, "I want to hear what you have to say."

I got myself started and actually asked the question much easier than I would have expected. At that point I didn't really care about the question and I cared about the answer even less. No one that I remember in my life had ever said anything like that to me. Maybe it was because it didn't feel patronizing at all. "I'm listening." Maybe it was because it was being said by someone who knows what it's like, really knows, because they've lived it. "I want to hear what you have to say." Whatever the reason, it hit me hard, in a place that needed it.

After the meeting I stuck around and talked for a few more minutes with a few people, including the speech therapist who had spoken to me. I remembered exactly what he had said, but I couldn't dwell on it because I knew I would get really emotional. After leaving the building and walking through the parking lot toward home I let the two statements he had uttered slide back into my head. If I had been at home alone at that moment I would have cried for several minutes. Being that I was in a public place with some people walking around, I just let a few tears fall. After a few blocks I came upon a co-worker out walking her dog. She lives toward my house so we walked together and had a pleasant conversation. When I got home my wife told me that she had told our three year old daughter that I would come in and give her a kiss when I got home. She shares a room with our one year old son, so I went in quietly. I was not surprised to find her still awake and we spent a few minutes whispering together before I kissed her one last time and left. I then went and washed the dishes while my wife dried and we talked about a variety of mundane things. The climax of the evening was, without a doubt, hearing those two things said to me, but the rest of it means something too, even though they're everyday things that won't stay with me forever. I stuck around and talked...had a pleasant conversation...spent a few minutes whispering together...talked about a variety of mundane things...

I'm on the right track.

No Epiphanies

Testing the water
To see if it is too hot
Better yet, jump in!
The other day I was at a meeting at work. It involved a speaker standing in front of a group of about twenty people and giving a presentation. The speaker stumbled over his words quite frequently. There were a number of times he suddenly seemed unsure and had some repetitions. More than once he had to back track and start a sentence over because he got mixed up in the middle of it. Through all of this though, I'm confident that no one in the audience thought that he had a speech problem. At worst they may have thought he wasn't prepared enough or was too nervous or wasn't as familiar with the materials as he should have been.

Over the past year or so I've enjoyed noticing people's speech - more specifically, the imperfections in their speech. But the one difference between all of their speech and mine is that their imperfections are deemed normal and mine are not. Facial tension, closed eyes, and jaw jerks don't fall into most people's idea of normal speech. My goal is to get my speech to the point where, even if the number of them is above average, the disfluencies are normal. I think that my biggest hurdle is that years ago, when I first started stuttering, the things I tried very hard not to do were things that were normal disfluencies, things like repetitions. Because I feared those normal speech mistakes so much, I would not allow myself to produce them and instead replaced them with very abnormal looking and sounding tension. I realize that my fear is very much irrational in that everyone makes speech mistakes and virtually no one cares.

So to recap - I pay attention to people's speech errors and realize how common they are. I know my fear of these normal mistakes is completely irrational. I know all this. I know that it's good that I know all this. I know that me knowing all this is a step in the right direction. I get told that it's great that I have these realizations and it's great that I can talk about it and that I'm good at seeing what's going on with myself. I like the kind words, but all the praise and all the personal realizations don't change the way I speak. So where is my goddamned light bulb moment? I know, I know, it’s not that simple. Maybe the answer is simply that even if I get it all figured out and all the emotional speech baggage is removed, I still need to contend with well over two decades worth of tense speech habits.

Why Therapy?

The hope of others
Resides as a driving force
Pushed by their requests
This simple question is really a multitude of queries all rolled into one. Do I care enough about my stutter to spend the time and effort on therapy? Do the struggles I have with producing speech negatively affect my life enough to spend the time and effort? Do I honestly believe that any type of therapy will produce an outcome that is improved enough from how my speech currently is to allow me to be happy with it? If I believe that, do I honestly believe that I possess the gumption and motivation to do the type of therapy I’ll need to do to achieve that end? Yeah, these questions ain’t all gettin’ answered tonight.

Stuttering certainly does negatively affect my life. It causes me extreme frustrations at times. It makes me think about and notice my speech every time I talk. I dwell on it prior to, during, and after speaking. I feel good when I don’t struggle and not so good when I do (“not so good” can vary from “not a big deal” to “super duper shitty”, depending on who I’m talking to, what the situation is, how bad my tension is, etc). That being said - Has my speech problem held me back in life? In the grand scheme of things, no, I don’t think so, but on the small scale it has because there are times I don’t say everything I want to say or cut myself short because it’s easier than fighting. Well, I think that sort of answers one of the questions.

The bottom line right now is this: I like going to my speech therapy. I’m not always sure that what I’m doing is going to have any positive, long term effects, but I’m not sure that it won’t, so I’m fine with it.

Deep Breath...

"Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process." -- Phillips Brooks