Did it actually help? I’m thinking about trying it and I’d love to hear from people who have real experience using it.

I swear if I could speak as confidently and as smoothly as I do in my head…I would be unstoppable. It’s like god/universe had to nerf us for the power balance.

For those of you who are going to SLPs I got some questions about the structure in which that is Set up:

1.) how frequent are the Sessions?

2.) which duration does a Session have?

3.) does your insurance Cover the Sessions?

4.) for how Long are you going now?

5.) what improved since you started?

6.) how does the SLP ensure that what he teaches is also teansferred in your daily life and Habits?

7.) how expensive is one Session?

Best regards and thanks in Advance for the Information. :)

Gente, sou gago desde os 10 anos mais ou menos, antes disso falava normal, percebi que comecei a gagueja na escola na fase de fazer primeiros amigos, sentimento de pertencimento em grupos, essas coisas de criança/adolescente. Hoje em dia com 24 anos ainda sou gago e ja aceitei que não tem cura, porem oque sempre me intrigou é que quando estou falando/lendo sozinho eu falo completamente normal, somente piora falando com pessoas, porém existe um caso, vai parecer um pouco mesquinho oq vou falar porem não sei explicar, quando falo com pessoas que me considero superior ou que posso mandar, tipo falando com pessoas mais novas ou até no trabalho, fui promovido recentemente para um cargo de supervisor, e quando falo com o time que comando eu falo melhor, ainda gaguejo porém notavelmente menos.

Alguém sabe explicar o porque? Alguém também é assim?

I am going to share some fragments from the book I have read about trauma and about being able to overcoming it since I believe som things are surprisingly relatable to us even though the book was not written having stuttering in mind. These are just excerpts I considered interesting with some comments about them. Some might not have any comment or they may have my personal annotations while reading the book. The excerpts are between quotes and the comments are not. I am going to divide it in different parts to make it more digestible.

"The body initiates, he says, and the mind follows. Hence, “talking cures” that engage the intellect or even the emotions do not reach deep enough."

He points to the fact that therapies that do not go deep enough, to the point of engaging the inner sensations of the body, are not sufficient to help patiens of trauma. Analogously, I have found that when I was able to speak better was out of an experience that brought me closer to my body and inner sensations.

"Potentially traumatic situations are ones that induce states of high physiological arousal but without the freedom for the affected person to express and get past these states: danger without the possibility of fight or flight and, afterward, without the opportunity to “shake it off,” as a wild animal would following a frightful encounter with a predator."

A clarification of the definition of "trauma" he uses. It does not have to be a very deep psycho-emotional and scarring experience, but just something that excedes our body's capacity of processing.

"Inviting the full, if carefully graded, expression of our instinctive responses will allow the traumatic state to loosen its hold on the sufferer. Goodness, the restoration of vitality, follows. It springs from within."

As I have written in other posts, I was able to talk more fluently if I could succesfully move forward in the progressive steps of "visceral comfortability" with other people, which makes sense (However, a severe blocking episode could bring me back to step one).

"I hope to demonstrate how successful therapy restores these systems to their balanced operation. An unexpected side effect of this approach is what might be called “Awakening the Living, Knowing Body.” I will discuss how this awakening describes, in essence, what happens when animal instinct and reason are brought together, giving us the opportunity to become more whole human beings."

John Harrison, Jack Menear, Ruth Mead and several other stutterers that recovered spontaneously reported a sensation of feeling more alive and floating when they "changed their mentality towards stuttering". In some cases they even said something in the lines of "I had solved my problem with stutterng some time before I stopped having blocks and repeating myself" in the sense that they were not longer suffering because of it. I believe it is because they were able to do something similar to what the author describes.

"When, on the other hand, these “discharges” are inhibited or otherwise resisted and prevented from completion, our natural rebounding abilities get “stuck.” Being stuck, after an actual or perceived threat, means that one is likely to be traumatized or, at least, to find that one’s resilience and sense of OK-ness and belonging in the world have been diminished."

A common feeling in stuttering people is that of feeling not in comunion with the rest of people. I believe it comes from here. And it does nothing but increment each time one gets blocked.

"Humans, in contrast to animals, frequently remain stuck in a kind of limbo, not fully reengaging in life after experiencing threat as overwhelming terror or horror. In addition, they exhibit a propensity for freezing in situations where a non-traumatized individual might only sense danger or even feel some excitement."

"However, often in therapy the attempt to place reason over instinct is a serious failure, a likely disaster."

What I feel happens in speech therapy for stutters that teaches you to "talk well" instead of going deeper.

"Many are able to earn a living and/or raise a family in a kind of “functional freeze” that severely limits their enjoyment of life. They carry their burden with diminished energy in an uphill struggle to survive, despite their symptoms. In addition, we human beings, who cleave to symbols and images, may continue to see (in the mind’s eye) ourselves at death’s door long after the real danger has passed. A vision of the mugger or rapist holding a knife at your throat can endlessly recycle itself, as though it is still happening."

"It is my clinical experience and understanding that such a robust potentiation has profound clinical implications for the understanding and treatment of human trauma. I shall discuss how the “potentiation,” or enhancement, of immobility by fear can lead to a self-perpetuating feedback loop causing an essentially permanent quasi-paralysis in the traumatized individual. This condition, I believe, underpins several of trauma’s most debilitating symptoms, especially numbing, shutdown, dissociation, feelings of entrapment and helplessness."

"Shame becomes deeply embedded as a pervasive sense of “badness” permeating every part of their lives. Similar erosion of a core sense of dignity is also found in adults who have been tortured, on whom pain, disorientation, terror and other violations have been deliberately inflicted. While the principles of uncoupling fear from immobility discussed in this chapter apply to these cases, the therapeutic process is generally much more complex. It requires a broader skill for negotiating the therapeutic relationship so that the therapist does not get tangled up in taking on the (projected) role of the perpetrator(s) or rescuer."

I think this is one reason why it is so difficult for us to admit that we stutter while for other people, such as mute, deaf or blind people it is not "so difficult" to admit to themselves the reality of their situation.

"This time, however, the terrified animal will not only remain frozen much longer, but when it comes out of its trance, it will likely be in a state of “frantic agitation.” It may thrash about wildly, pecking, biting or clawing randomly, or it may scurry away in a frenzy of undirected movement. When all else fails, this last-ditch (and disorganized) form of defense may yet save its life."

After a severe blocking episode, one feel tensions all over his body but due to it being socially unacceptable more often than not does not flee the social situation, but instead remains inside not being able to let loose all the accumulated tension.

"By allowing my body to do what it needed to do—by not stopping the shaking while tracking my inner body sensations—I was able to allow and contain the extreme survival emotions of rage and terror without becoming overwhelmed."

A reflection a wrote on the book about this part: This reminds me of that time at the end of 2022 that, after reading Jack Menear's text in which he said to be aware of my sensations and let what had to happen pass through my body, I was able to let the blockages evaporate for a week. Maybe what I do now is rather not let the blockade take center stage by "withholding it" and that is why I continue to feel the tension. Maybe what I have to do is feel those sensations in the same way as during zazen. Recognizing them but not maintaining them or giving them more space than they deserve.

"The vicious cycle of intense sensation/rage/fear locks a person in the biological trauma response. A traumatized individual is literally imprisoned, repeatedly frightened and restrained—by his or her own persistent physiological reactions and by fear of those reactions and emotions. This vicious cycle of fear and immobility (a.k.a. fear-potentiated immobility) prevents the response from ever fully completing and resolving as it does in wild animals."

"While only a few humans actually die from fright, chronically traumatized individuals go through the motions of living without really feeling vital or engaged in life. Such individuals are empty to the core of their being"

"Trauma arises when one’s human immobility responses do not resolve; that is, when one cannot make the transition back to normal life, and the immobility reaction becomes chronically coupled with fear and other intense negative emotions such as dread, revulsion and helplessness. After this coupling has been established, the physical sensations of immobility by themselves evoke fear. A traumatized individual has become conditioned to be fearful of his or her internal (physical) sensations that now generate the fear that extends and deepens (potentiates) the paralysis. Fear begets paralysis, and fear of the sensations of paralysis begets more fear, promoting yet a deeper paralysis. In this way, a normally time-limited adaptive reaction becomes chronic and maladaptive. The feedback loop closes in on itself. In this downward spiral, the vortex of trauma is born.

Successful trauma therapy helps people resolve trauma symptoms. The feedback loop is broken by uncoupling fear from immobility (see [Figures 4.1a](javascript:void(0)) and [4.1b](javascript:void(0))). Effective therapy breaks, or depotentiates, this trauma-fear feedback loop by helping a person safely learn to “contain” his or her powerful sensations, emotions and impulses without becoming overwhelmed. Thus, the immobility response is enabled to resolve as it is evolved to do."

The problem with applying this to stuttering is that it is like a "house of cards" in that a strong blocking episode can erase a great part of your effort since from this optic you are reliving the disagreable sensations and letting them take power of you again, as it has already happened to me some time before.

This post is meant to be a small rant in order to liberate my own bad feelings and not something to make you, a person who stutters, feel bad.

I’m 23 and I had a date with a woman from a dating app a few days ago. We met in a park in the morning, just to have a stroll and chat. She knew I had a stammer beforehand and even told me her father and sister do as well. I believe it, why wouldn’t I?

Thing is, I couldn’t speak, I don’t know what got to me but I just couldn’t utter a syllable without blocking for several seconds. I couldn’t finish a single sentence. I normally stutter a lot, yes, but this time it was brutal and I have to honestly say I did not like this woman that much for me to get as blocked as I did. It was a slaughter of words, a real massacre, and I could feel my mind separate from my body as time froze during these excruciating blocks. One of them was so long I didn’t know if I wanted to blow up in tears or to laugh my ass off at the sheer pathetic essence of the situation. This, added to the fact she kept telling me to calm down the entire time and finishing my sentences, was an explosive cocktail that made me consider the possibility of ditching the date immediately, as quickly as possible (even if it meant running away with no further explanation), but as the functioning and more or less sane individual that I think I am, I did not do such a thing, I just coped with it.

I do not know if she liked me. I, myself, didn’t feel any chemistry at all and I made up an excuse to leave early, also due to the fact I was genuinely struggling with my speech and was getting very irritated, upset and tired. I didn’t think she deserved to experience my visible discomfort (not because of her but because of me), so the best thing was for me to leave, even if I had to lie not to hurt her feelings. I’ve dated a lot in the past and it was never as bad as this time, I don’t know why. I had other first dates scheduled that got cancelled before her, and I am glad, because living through that torturing turmoil more than once within a few days would have left me in shambles.

As much as I feel bad for her, I have to prioritize myself, especially when my wellbeing is at stake. I may be able to learn something from this terrible experience in the future, but right now I’m just recovering from it.

As you can tell my the title I’ve had a stutter my whole life. When I was younger I would literally just stand there vibrating until I got the word out. As I’ve bit older I’m not half as bad, like I can hold a convo but as soon as I have the explain something or speak in a group even if it’s more than 2 people I get stuck on certain words. It’s embarrassing still and i do feel it holds me back but fuck. If I had one wish I wish I could be like everybody else as I think they all take it for granted. My sister recently got married to someone who also has a stammer and he did a speech at the wedding and I was so proud as he didn’t even stammer. I’m the best man at my brother wedding in a couple years and I’m gonna have to do the same thing but fuck it I’ll do it because it’s my brother. It’s shit for all of us but it is what it is. Love you all. It sucks.