Distracting from, forgetting stuttering---the key

For the last 20 years or so I have read countless books, attended seminars and had the chance to learn from indivduals much more successful in life than I. So many times I have read, heard & been taught about "thoughts become things", "What you think about you bring about", "law of attraction", "the secret", "cause and effect", "affirmations/auto-suggestion", "Visualization", "Re-framing", "NLP", "Mediation" and many more that escape me at this
time. Outside of working on my Fluency I have practiced and implemented all of these with varying degrees of success.

Through my wonderful journey to fluency I have observed all successful fluency programs seem to have one primary thing in common, and that is to "not" think about stuttering or to distract the individual from thinking about stuttering. The "Fluency" devices such as the Fluency Enhancer, Speech Easy, Fluency Master and any DAF device are all distraction instruments in my eyes. Normally when a person first wears the devices there is an immediate fluency, simply because the person is hearing their own voice in the ear piece delayed and are distracted by thinking of stuttering/blocking/scanning etc. After some use the effect wears off because the person becomes accustomed to the distraction and begins their old behaviors which creates their stuttering.

In the Air Flow technique the person learns to "not" think of stuttering before speaking but to think of "resting" before getting set to speak in a completely focused state of relaxation. This focused thought takes the power of attention away from stuttering behaviors (scanning), and this combined with a soft start to deal with any residual physical tension produces fluency. If done properly, I can say from experience it works EVERY time!

The techinque Andrew & I use is much the same, starting with a "soft" first word and not thinking thoughts of stuttering but the first word only. Again if done properly works EVERY time! There are no exceptions.

When I really looked at my stuttering I realized I always knew when I was going to stutter ahead time. I would scan a word which I deemed a "feared" word - which is essentially an affirmation repeated over and over again everytime I had to say that word. "Ok you always have problems on your name, "STEVE"! And guess what! When I told myself
that I always had problems, I always did. And there where thousands of the emotinally charged affirmations for many words, people, situations etc. Similarly when I did this it worked EVERY TIME! And produced perfect stuttering!

Also 99% of the time when I was alone I would not stutter? And I realized when I alone 99% of the time I didn't think about stuttering or scan words. So if I don't stutter when I don't think about stuttering then I speak fluent? Is it THAT easy? YEP, works everytime! So if I could bring that same mental/emotional/physical scenario into a real world situation it's safe to say I would not stutter.

Again more PROOF! I remember having a discussion with Andrew Greenstein early in 04' speaking about & affirming to him & myself that my feared sounds are "T" words and our technique was not working on these "Feared Words". He pointed out that I said two "T" words perfectly during our conversation, and that I don't always have problems with "T" words. What I realized is I forgot to stutter on the two "T" words, it was like they slipped under my stuttering radar? (This was early on my journey, I haven't owned the phrase "Feared words/sounds" for a long time).

So is the secret to fluency simply replacing the thoughts of stuttering to thoughts of something else? YEP! I took the journey and I proved it. Pretty cool.....

Maybe I should create the "Fluffy Soft White Elephant" anti-stuttering technique and write a book. People could focus all their attention on thinking of a "Fluffy Soft White Elephant" prior to speaking instead of stuttering, then switch their intent and speak with a fluffy soft word. Funny thing is with practice it would work......

-Steve Mulder