Yesterday evening, I presided the local NSA meeting again. I planned to talk about stuttering hexagon of John H. Harrison, who overcomed his stuttering when he was about 35 years old. I got to know him from a stuttering discussion forum. I read his article about stuttering hexgon. I got very excited by his article. I bought his book from NSA website. I read his book through a number of times. I learned a lot from there. It set the base for my recovery.My talk yesterday was not so well-organized. I mainly talked about following subject.The cause of stuttering:I presented my view of the cause of stuttering. Basically, I believe that most of the persons who stutter do not have physical defects in their speech mechanism. Like me, I could speak fluently when I am alone, when I am reading, when I talk to myself, when I talk to my little daughter Amy. I experiece problems when I feel I am not secure, in stressful situation, in situations that I afraid of humilation, or I am too eager to talk. There are a lot cases I could speak fairly fluently with a little stuttering and hesitation. I do not think I have any physical defects in speech organs. However, I do believe that my speech organs are lacking of exercise. I have the musical instrument, but it is on in good condition. Recently, I am working very hard to improve my speech. I talked and practised a lot. I feel that my voice is improving. I do not need to use too much force to get the syllable out. It is just like other mussles. If you do not use your mussles too often, it will become weak, so does the speech mussles. Just like doing push-ups, if we do not do it regularly, our mussles are weak. If we excercie regularly, we will strenthen the mussles and we can do more push-ups. If we talk me, we will strenghthen our speech mussles and those mussles will be more flexible and stronger. By doing this, we will use less force and struggle to talk.I visited the internet discussion forum very often. Two yahoo groups give me very good information. One is stutteringchat, the other is neurosemanticsstuttering. I like the neurosemantics webside better because it is composed by some inspirational person. Bobby Bodenhammer is the host. He is a preacher for church and aslo a NLP/NS practitioner. I bought a book from him. However, I have not do any practises of the NS/NLP yet. There are many people who are recovering or recovered from their stuttering problem. J. H Harrison is on this forum too. I read the posts from Andrew Greenstein who claimed as a recovered PWS recently. I listen his Toastmaster speeches. He is really doing a very good job in Toastmaster. One sentence of him caught my eye: "I stopped stutter much earlier than I stopped stuttering" . What he is saying that he overcomed his stuttering in his mind well before his completely overcomed the stuttering phenomena. I have the same view with himThe stutteringchat discussion group has another view of stuttering. The most prominent view of that group is that stuttering is genetic. We can not do much about it. We stutter because our gene programmed to be a PWS. I wrote several post to dispute with this. I was advised to read some papers about genetics origin. I read some of them; however, I still do not believe that. In my opinion, we will never find a stuttering gene. Stutter runs in familys because we shared some similar values, habits and standard in a family. This mutual influence is very critial for aquiring stuttering. As I told my story before, I got the stuttering problem by imitate my cousins. Because of the stuttering problem, a PWS's personality is often distorted. I believe that I am a person who is very open, and caring and helpful; however, I developed social forbia. I am so afraid to talk to other people because I do not expose my stuttering. I do not want to be humiliated. This social phobia and stuttering are interact and reenforce each other. Even now, I still have some difficulties when I meet other people. Sometime, a little voice in my mind constantly telling me that I should not be agressive. I should withhold myself. I feel in some occasions I just do not want to hear my voice even though I am so eager to talk.If we want to overcome the stuttering problem, we need to change our whole person. J. H. Harrison did that, Andrew Greenstein did that, my cousin did that too. As for my cousin, I heard that he overcome his stuttering many years ago. The main reason is that he worked as a craftman and he need to talk to customers. He was forced to have more chance to talk. His living depends on that. Once he opened his mouth, he found ways to ease the speech blocks. I did not have opportunity to talk to him yet. My father told me that he speaks very soft and slow. I am working on my speech problem now. I need to change my personality too to comodate the newly acquired fluency. I have couple of strategies now. I greet everybody passing by. I am seeking any opportunities to talk such as Toastmaster meetings and NSA meetings, and talk to somebody I know and somebody I do not know. Actually, I made many aquitancies during past month. Each time we meet, we greet each other and talk about something.I know that there is still a long way to go. I will keep doing my best. I will succeed, just as other persons who overcome their speech impediment.
