Intressanta aspekter om hur man skapar talflyt- (An experiment)

I did an experiment to see if speaking in an overly controlled way is the main cause of speech blocks. I pretty much never have any speech blocks when I’m talking out loud in a room by myself, so my experiment was to see if I would block in a room by myself if I purposely control the mechanics of speaking. I tried preplanning my sentences and visualizing the words before I said them, I tried controlling my articulation, I tried monitoring my speech, I tried thinking about every word I said and every breath I took, and guess what happened? I still never even had one speech block. The only way I could create blocks in a room by myself is by purposely tensing up my throat. Now I’m convinced that controlling the mechanics of speech isn’t actually the main cause of stuttering.

I think the main cause of stuttering is one of two things: our anticipatory anxiety about speaking in certain situations causes our vocal cords to get so tense that they can’t vibrate, or as our guru John Harrison says, our subconscious desire to hold back causes us to tense up our vocal cords to prevent ourselves from speaking. I’m not sure which one of those explanations it is though. I still think controlling the mechanics of speech is counterproductive because if we preplan a sentence we might start worrying about saying certain words which increases our anticipatory anxiety.

I think whichever explanation is right, the solution is the same. I think if we stop constantly thinking about speech, stop trying to control speech, stop thinking of stuttering as a terrible thing to be avoided at all costs, stop worrying about what people will think of us if we stutter, stop being overly perfectionistic, stop overthinking everything we do and just live in the moment, stop thinking of life as a performance or competition and instead just think of life as a fun adventure, and stop acting like a shy unassertive person, then that will provide a difficult environment for speech blocks to happen in, and they will happen less and less over time until eventually we think to ourselves ”I can’t even remember the last time I had a speech block!”

I started thinking like that yesterday, and immediately my fluency dramatically increased. I was actually way more fluent than I was after 9 months of obsesively trying to use Dr. Shwartz’s slow start technique perfectly. I was shocked! But I won’t think about it too much because then I’ll be back to judging speech and thinking of speaking as a performance.

Alex

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