I want to be like Mike

I hope he doesn't mind me talking about him and I hope he corrects any incorrect characterizations I might have made.

Mike is a friend of mine. Mike is an SLP. Mike is a stutterer. Mike is a former stutterer. When Mike talks about speech, he does so like no one else I've heard before. This is true because he speaks from his own experience coping, struggling, overcoming, anguishing, surviving, helping, learning, teaching. I don't always understand the importance or the depth of what I'm hearing, but I listen and try to absorb as much as possible because as different as we are, we're the same in the ways that matter for the topic of stuttering. Mike is the one that affected me profoundly with a single sentence, as chronicled here. Mike used to stutter. And by that, I don't mean some nice, simple repetitions, I mean the whole facial tension, twisting of the head type of stuttering. I know this because he's not only talked about it, he shows people exactly what he used to do. He can demonstrate his struggling whenever he wants to. He is exerting control over his speech by making mistakes at the time of his choosing.

I'm at a point in my therapy where it's great because I'm aware of blah blah blah. I realize my irrational fears, my idiosyncrasies, blah blah blah. I've also realized that I'm at a point where I'm comfortable. Being comfortable isn't a bad thing, but if I stay in that cozy spot and never push myself beyond it, then this is as far as I'm going to get.

A month or so ago, I talked to Mike on the phone for awhile. He explained that one of biggest positive steps he took in his therapy was confronting his struggling. He did this by being able to mimic at will his worst secondary behaviors. He suggested I do the same thing. His idea was this: Get a recording of me that shows a range of my worst struggling. Watch that recording over and over so that I become desensitized to seeing myself doing those abnormal things that I do everyday. Take note of what I don't like the most about it and practice doing those things so that I can eventually do them whenever I want. The point of it would be for me to able to have total control over my speech, so that I know I can act out those struggles when I want to. It's a way of confronting a fear and coming to a better understanding of my speech.

Right now I'm actually more nervous about properly producing the recording of my struggling than I am of trying to bring myself to voluntarily repeat those struggles. I'm afraid that there will be technical problems (we'll be recording to tape and since I don't own a VCR, we're going to try to transfer it to a digital format). I'm afraid that I (or my clinician) won't feel that what we recorded is a very good show of the worst of my worst. My fears are being a little magnified because I only have about seven weeks left to work with my current clinician and I want to get this recording right the first time so that we can spend as much time as a possible on the real meat of the task. I decided to write about this right now because we're going to be going at this for the first time on Thursday. Talking about it beforehand ensures that it's out there, i.e. I can't back out as easily if it really sucks.

But really, how bad can it be? All I'm trying to do is force myself to do something voluntarily that I do all the time anyway.