I Have a Voice

by Bob G Bodenhamer

  “My parents wanted me to be perfect.” “I always wanted to impress my dad so he would love me.”

  “I had to be seen, but not heard.”

  “I felt suffocated.”

  “My parents were constantly fighting, and I just used to hide in my room.”

  “My parents were ashamed of my stuttering.”

  Figure 2.4: Beliefs about lack of personal control

  If the PWS grew up in an environment that was safe, secure, and that gradually allowed them to take more and more control over their life, they will gladly answer positively. However, if security was under-represented during their early years, they probably cannot answer. Then you have to help them find examples of being in control despite those factors. There is usually some area of life in which they did have a sense of control, even if that meant rebelling against their parents in some way. They could self-harm, engage in drug-abuse or develop eating disorders. These could all be seen as expressions of “being in control of your own life”. Alan used his stuttering as a means of getting back at his parents. He perceived that they were out of control so Alan chose to use stuttering to demonstrate that he could control his speech. It was a way for him to say, “I will show you. I am not totally at your mercy.”

  Childhood is a time of confusing emotions anyway, but when the child is not listened to or taken seriously, it is hardly surprising that they turn inward and find other ways to deal with their emotions. Despite their best efforts they can never meets the needs of their parents or significant others, so they express themselves in the only way they can, and this may result in trying to control their own bodies and in inhibiting the muscles which control breathing and speech. These childhood patterns provide some kind of relief, but this continues and contributes to their blocking in later life.

  Developing a sense of power and resourcefulness is absolutely essential in overcoming blocking. The psychologist Martin Seligman (1975, 1990) researched “Learned Helplessness” and “Learned Optimism”. His work speaks clearly about how a person develops learned helplessness in becoming a victim of the blocking rather than taking control and becoming optimistic about overcoming the behaviour.

  The 3Ps of learned helplessness

  Personal: People who block tend to personalize their disfluency. They tend to identify with the badness of their speech. “My speech is flawed, and so am I.” It is as if the individual is thinking, “As I speak, so I am.”

  Pervasive: The person generalizes from their disfluency in language and assumes that their flawed nature extends to other activities in their life. Everything in every part of their life must be bad.

  I hear many sad stories from people who block who have chosen not to go for advanced education; who spend hours studying a thesaurus to find substitute words for those they usually block on; who cannot ask someone out for a date; who do not apply for advancement at work, and so on, all because of how they speak on some occasions. It is heart-breaking to hear how this one issue can so permeate and determine someone’s life.

  Permanent: After years of failed attempts at gaining fluency, many people come to believe that their stuttering will last forever. “I have done this since I was a child; I have tried everything; I have spent thousands of dollars … and I still stutter.” It is no wonder that they tend to develop a sense of helplessness about the problem.

  One way of thinking about this is that when we make things personal, let them pervade other areas of our life and believe they are permanent, we P all over ourselves!

  Learned optimism reverses these 3Ps

  How can the PWS turn these three Ps around and look on the bright side? The first step is to have them notice that they are doing this, and then become curious about how exactly they are limiting their options. By mentally standing back they can observe themselves and make an honest appraisal of their behavior. There is no point in trying to pretend or to deny what they are doing. They need to adopt the attitude that they are responsible for their own behavior. “My body-mind knows how to speak fluently; I don’t need to relearn how to talk. I can already do that. I just have to learn how to let go of the fear and anxiety that drives my blocking so that I can transfer my ability to speak fluently to all situations and contexts and I am going to do that.”

  Not Personal: “I accept that I am more than my behavior. As a fully functioning human being I can take responsibility for what I do. And if I perform less than wonderfully in certain contexts then I can do something about that.” Thinking in this way will affect everything you do.

  Not Pervasive: “I am widening my focus of attention, and appreciate all the other things in my life that I do well.” “I am altering the way I talk about myself (to be more interested in other things) and I am in the process of doing that.”

  Not Permanent: “When I look back at my life, I realize that I have always been making significant changes in who I am and what I do. Who knows what awesome changes I will be making in my speech in the future! I once learned to block and stutter and that means that I can unlearn them.”

  You are always “more”

  Who are you? I mean, who are you really? This is an unanswerable question. Whatever description you put on yourself, you know that it does not adequately describe the rich complexity that you are. I love the statement, “No matter what you think you are, you are more than that.”

  If you are asked for a “self-definition” – when filling in a form, or writing a résumé – you adjust your definition to meet the needs of the person asking the question. You probably choose to label yourself in a way that communicates the essence of who you are to someone else: “I’m a therapist”, “I’m a parent”, “I’m single”, or even, “I’m a stutterer”. Each of these labels is based on a quality, on group membership, or on a particular behavior or thought pattern that you think encapsulates something of your nature. However, if you use derogatory terms or negative descriptions to put yourself down because there are aspects of yourself that you do not like, then how is that going to affect you as a person? (Perhaps I should stop using the term PWS and change it to PWUTS – People Who Used To Stutter, or even better, P – just People.) If you do notice you have slipped into this habit, simply remind yourself that, “True, at times I think of myself that way, but I am more than that.”And then come up with an answer to: “What am I which is more than that …? And what am I that is even more than that …?” Continue as far as you like. Your unconscious mind will give you answers, so heed what comes.

  As people mature into adulthood, they become increasingly self-aware, develop a richer concept of themselves as a person. Your sense of self is mostly maintained through the language you use – self-descriptions, labels, characteristics – together with some kind of evaluation: good or bad, desirable or undesirable, and so on. People update their self-understanding based on how they deal with the events in their lives, their interactions with others, and with the world in general. If what happens matches your expectations, you think you are doing well. If you are frustrated, you may think you are “hopeless” or “worthless”. If you then feel contempt and despise yourself because your blocking and stuttering behavior led to unfulfilled expectations, then your model of the world may be perceived as letting you down as a human being.

  A mature concept of self celebrates your sense of innate self-worth. PWS often view themselves as innately sick, as having little or no value and worth – just because they are human. Because they do typically view themselves as worthless, they tend to assume others have a low opinion of them too. They constantly seek the approval of others, hoping to discover that they are an OK person after all. But they keep on beating themselves up because of this awful blocking and stuttering behavior and because they feel so unworthy.

  Countless times I have heard PWS belittle themselves, saying, “Bob, you must think I am weird.” “Bob, I am sorry that I can’t do better and be like your other clients. I know I am slow and stupid.” Such statements break my heart for here I am ta
lking to some of the bravest people with whom I have ever spoken to and they are constantly undervaluing themselves.

  Creating a healthy view of self is an inside job. The clinician’s aim is to assist the PWS in re-constructing their model of the world by including their bravery and persistence in dealing well with life’s challenges. This is surely much better than having depressed areas on their map based on hurt and meanings from childhood. These people have survived in a world with a speech handicap, and have dealt with it through their own courage, strength, and determination. Because their model of the world already includes “speaking fluently” in some contexts, the clinician’s job is to assist them in extending that ability to those parts which are still “depressed”, and to ensure that they increasingly accept and appreciate themselves and not care whether they block and stutter.

  Healthy people view themselves as innately valuable, worthwhile, lovable, and having dignity. They have nothing to prove, but everything to experience. They go about life exploring and enjoying those relationships and experiences that life offers. They do not let the judgment of others, much less the perceived judgments of others, affect them. Indeed, information from other people provides feedback on how they are doing as a human being, and which areas need their attention. Actually, once they reach that level of acceptance, most have already quit blocking and stuttering or have made major progress towards fluency.

  To gain fluency, it is essential that a PWS learns how to apply one thought to another (see Exercise 3.5). When a person can access their resources at will, they can maintain state control, and maintaining state control is the key to overcoming blocking. Indeed, learning how to maintain state control is the key to much in life. The people who block whom I have assisted to become proficient at managing their own states in all contexts are able to transfer those states of fluency into contexts that formerly led to blocking.

  Relationship with our thoughts

  People sometimes develop poor relationships with their thoughts. If they are fearful about what something means, that affects how they respond to it, and creates a problem. Improving that relationship leads to overcoming the problem. In the present context, the PWS’s relationship with their thoughts leads eventually to blocking. Ways to change your relationship with your thoughts was the subject of the ground-breaking work of Albert Ellis. Together with pioneer thinker Aaron Beck they are credited as being the fathers of Cognitive Psychology (of which NLP and Neuro-Semantics are branches). Ellis (1976) expounded his understanding of mind-body thus:

  Human thinking and emoting are not radically different processes; but at points significantly overlap. Emotions almost always stem directly from ideas, thoughts, attitudes, beliefs… and can usually be radically changed by modifying the thinking processes that keep creating them.

  Ellis became renowned for his list of ten Cognitive Distortions. Cognitive Therapy aims to correct these cognitive distortions or faulty thought patterns – the type of thinking that frequently leads to depression (something many PWS suffer from on a regular basis; for them, “life is depressing”). Clinicians can benefit from a knowledge of this list of distorted thinking because the PWS usually demonstrates these distortions in their thinking. This list is based on Burns (1989):

  All or nothing thinking – Another name for “black and white thinking”. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. This polarity thinking sorts the world of events and people in two extremes: good–bad, right–wrong, love–hate, and so on. Mapping the world in this fashion ignores the subtleties of life; the world has in-betweens, shades of gray. Failure to consider the middle zone can give rise to fundamentalism. The PWS exemplifies this by describing themselves in absolute terms: “I can’t even talk. I am a total failure and always will be.”

  Overgeneralization – The PWS experiences a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. This behavior explains how those experiences in childhood (being pointed out, embarrassed, judged, abused and so on) continue into adulthood perceived as hopeless to change.

  Mental filter – Concentrating so strongly on one aspect of a task or a situation to the exclusion of all else. The PWS becomes obsessive about trying to avoid blocking and stuttering.

  Disqualifying the positive – The world is interpreted in a way that reinforces negative feelings and explains away positive ones. The PWS who is caught up in this is genuinely depressed about their blocking. They reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for whatever reason, and maintain negative beliefs even though they are contradicted by everyday experiences. For instance, even though most PWS have consistently demonstrated fluency, many still hold to the belief that, “I have always blocked and stuttered and I always will.” Their own fluency fails to convince them that blocking and stuttering is a learned behavior and that it can be unlearned.

  Jumping to conclusions – Despite the lack of facts to substantiate their conclusion the PWS jumps to a negative interpretation. By their mind-reading shall you know them. As I have mentioned, PWS fear the judgments of others even when they do not know what is in the other person’s mind. This generates unnecessary anticipatory fear which leads to further blocking and stuttering.

  Magnification and minimization – PWS have a tendency to Catastrophize – entertain only “worst-case scenarios”. This makes sense when you consider the worst-case scenario thinker learned this in childhood. With their childhood being filled with much pain, hurt and uncertainty, they come to expect bad things to happen and prepare themselves for it. They also Awfulize – always look on the dark side. Many PWS view their speech extremely negatively, and from there they personalize (see step 10) by identifying with this behavior.

  Emotional reasoning – The PWS assumes their negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true” or “I feel it and hence my blocking and stuttering is a physical problem.” This type of thinking has led to the erroneous belief amongst speech pathologists that they need only treat the symptoms (the physical expression of blocking) rather than its cause (the mental frames that drive the blocking).

  “Should” statements – Operating predominately by necessity, which escalates into should-ing and must-ing – which Ellis has humorously labeled “musterbation”. Thinking the world ought to be a certain way puts pressure on the PWS: it generates unnecessary and inappropriate shame, guilt, self-contempt and other similar unresourceful states.

  PWS try to motivate themselves with shoulds and oughts, as though they must be punished before they can be expected to speak fluently. “I ought to be able to speak properly. After all, I am an adult. So I must stop this.” As a consequence of continued blocking, they experience guilt. A common notion is the need to be “perfect”. Rooted in childhood, this need drives shoulding: “I should do better.” “I should speak fluently.” “I must be perfect or no one will like me.” Obviously such thinking leads to more stress, more fear; more anxiety and consequently more blocking.

  Labeling and mislabeling – This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing their blocking as a behavior that they do sometimes, they attach a negative label to themselves such as “I’m a loser.” Such labeling leads to identifying with the behavior and that in turn tends to lock in the block. After all, if you believe yourself to be a loser then your life will be lived to prove that true.

  Personalizing and blame – Is the PWS ever good at this! The PWS believes that they are the cause of their blocking and stuttering, which indicates that something is wrong with them as a person. Major problems may arise if the PWS’s level of self-esteem is based on their speech and not on their innate worth as a human being. They judge their performance in terms of whether or not they can please others by being fluent. Once the PWS learns that they are far more than their speech behavior, they are well on the way to fluency.

  The way out of such cognitive distortions is to start thinking differently, and one way
to do this is to consider the future in terms of what you want to have in it. The following section provides a systematic way of helping someone think positively about what they want.

  Overcoming resistance

  Atough realization of change is that when you gain something you also lose something. People sometimes resist change when the fear of loss is stronger than the desire for gain. Even though the PWS is keen to let go of a limiting behavior and can imagine how life will be better thereafter, they may still not change because there are still unresolved issues which need to be addressed first. It is as if there are “parts” of them which have objections (see Exercise 5.2, step 7).

  PWS may resist overcoming stuttering because of the secondary gain they derive from it. It might seem crazy that someone would hang on to a debilitating behavior just because of the pay-off they get from it, but they do. The secondary gain may be getting protection or getting attention – benefits relevant to their childhood which they are hesitant to let go of. Until the mental frames which hold the blocking and stuttering in place are made conscious, and satisfactory alternatives found, they will continue to influence someone’s behavior.

  Imagining change as a magic wand which makes everything different could lead to uncritical and unrealistic expectations. When you think about your life, even when one big thing changed, many of the small things stayed pretty much the same. You still have to go shopping, pay the bills, put out the garbage. If the PWS suggests that, “Once I speak fluently everything will be wonderful”, tactfully point out that it may not be as clear cut as that. Speaking fluently puts them on the same basis as other people. No longer are they “disadvantaged”; they will lose their “special status”. There are no longer any excuses for under-performing; they will simply need to use their talents more. It’s a good idea to consider these losses and gains beforehand, so that they have more realistic expectations.