September 26 Meeting Update: What Works

We began our meeting as usual by introducing ourselves, but this time after saying "I am a person who stutters," we made a point of adding, "I am also a person who...." and filled in the blank with other aspects of our lives: the work we do, the interests and hobbies we have. It's all too easy to forget that we're so much more than people who stutter.

Once again we had students from a graduate speech pathology program as guests at our meeting. As always, they were interested to find out what, in our group's opinion, makes for effective speech therapy. We came up with what I think are some really good guidelines. First, effective therapy puts you in charge of your own speech. There may be special tools you use (like SpeechFlare or SpeechEasy), but ultimately you're the one who's making the changes happen. Second, effective therapy is well-structured and systematic; it teaches you a variety of techniques and shows you how to use them gradually, building up the difficulty as you're ready. Finally, it's all about practice, practice, practice.

One of our group members has shared that every single morning for the past few decades he has spent twenty-five minutes practicing voluntary stuttering while reading out loud. Another group member uses being stuck in traffic to practice easy-onset on feared words. At our end-of-the-month meetings we consistently practice public speaking. Sometimes we don't really feel like it. Other times the practice isn't as good as we expected. But we always learn something from it.

For me, the best thing about practice is this: it shows me that I can do what I set out to do. Maybe I didn't do it that well, but I did it. There's no more empowering feeling than that.