The Stuttering Paradox - Fears Lost but Never Forgotten
I started my Eye Motion Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) project in January of 2000 with the idea it might help improve my fluency. This therapy promised a new process for the reprocessing of fearful memories. When I would find myself stuck in a speech block, fear was the primary emotion I felt. Desensitizing myself to my fear of stuttering sounded like a reasonable approach. I gained a unique understanding of my earliest fears by carefully exploring the many layers of my childhood memories. When I first targeted my childhood stuttering with EMDR, my speech did not improve. Fortunately, early in this project I gained an insight to view even an increase in my stuttering as a very important part of my journey.
When working with EMDR it would often feel like I was just traveling through my childhood trying to discover what happened. With this project I was not trying to prove any personal theory of how stuttering develops. I am exploring some ideas about how my speech developed based on recent discoveries. My early childhood memories feel much more rich and whole because I unveiled some important missing elements. With this exploration, I found several interesting and surprising childhood patterns.
The first pattern I discovered was that most of my early memories were missing their emotional components. Before I started this process my early memories felt complete. I found, though, I was essentially just recalling the details of early events without the sensations and feelings I had experienced. Next I discovered my adult stuttering was linked to some childhood stuttering memories. As I continued to use EMDR to target memories relating to my stuttering, I found they linked to earlier and earlier fearful memories. As I explored farther back in time the emotional energy kept increasing. The fear in these early memories felt similar to my adult fear of stuttering except I found the early emotions even more powerful.
Through this work I traced my stuttering back to three emotionally charged memories. I was astonished when different characteristics of my stuttering started to vanish as I discovered the fearful emotions linked to each memory. These events could be described as common things that happen to many of us when we are very young. Although they might seem ordinary from an adult perspective, I feel I became terrified because I was so young and I did not understand what was happening. I was lucky to stumble onto one of the core links only about six months into my EMDR therapy.
I believe my memories closely linked to a lifetime of stuttering all occurred around age two. The core events are crying in pain, shivering from the cold and having difficulty breathing. They seem to have nothing to do with early speech but I feel they are all powerfully linked to preverbal communication. Crying for help when I was sick and in pain is an obvious communication link. Shivering from the cold to the point of being unable to even call for help is linked to an unsuccessful attempt to communicate. When I was nauseous and having trouble breathing I remember waving my legs and arms trying to call for help. Fear linked to communication is fundamental to all three of these early memories.
My first fluency gain with EMDR was shortly after I targeted a memory from when I was about seven years old. I could remember as a child that my stuttering continued until I ran completely out of breath. This memory linked to a much earlier crying memory where I stopped crying only momentarily because I had to breathe. Shortly after exploring these powerful events, my stuttering vanished in situations when I was talking to people I did not know. Since I first began stuttering, talking to someone for the first time was often most difficult. Speaking to someone for the first time was now easy. Surprisingly though, as I became friends with some one new my stuttering would gradually return. I had built my life around knowing what might trigger my dysfluent speech. I would have good and bad days but the underlying fear of stuttering was always with me. It felt like in certain speaking situations, the switch controlling my stuttering was now somehow just automatically switching off. I found my newfound fluency gains both unsettling and hopeful.
More than two years passed with monthly EMDR therapy sessions without any more quick jumps in fluency. I was exploring a wide range of early childhood memories and was also experiencing a gradual reduction in my stuttering. The next breakthrough came when I linked a fearful shaking from the cold to an infant event. I feel this memory is from when I was also about two years old. I was cold, shaking and unable to call for help. After I worked through the emotions from this shaking memory, my stuttering was generally gone except when I answered the telephone. My telephone speech blocking is now starting to weaken as I process through my nausea and trouble breathing memory.
Each of these core memories, I feel, have linked with different types of common speaking situations. It is essential to my journey to follow the emotional energy wherever it might lead. As this process unfolds, I often do not know why certain events are bound together. Later, when parts of the puzzle become clear, I sometimes see why certain events are linked. I feel a powerful connection between these three core memories and my stuttering vanishing. I hope to soon understand why these memories have influenced separate aspects of my stuttering.
If I now focus on a time when my stuttering was severe, my stuttering returns temporarily. My stuttering also returns if I focus on certain childhood memories not involving speech. One of my earliest embarrassing memories was when I was five years old in kindergarten class. The whole class is standing, paired up, holding hands in a long line waiting to go outside to play. Our teacher standing in front of us says, �Everyone must be quiet before anyone can go outside.� I did not realize what I was about to do would cause me so much embarrassment. I was holding hands with a girl who was a friend. I turned to her and kissed her on the cheek. It seemed like the whole class started screaming and I was the center of the excitement. I remember feeling like I wanted run and hide. I just stood there with my head down and did not really understand what was happening.
Looking back as an adult to this embarrassing childhood event, the question was always, �What could I have been thinking?� I now believe I understand what was going on. My experience with kissing at age five was limited to its use as a greeting. I had just been told by my teacher not to make a sound, so kissing seemed to me like a simple and quiet way to communicate. I was just saying hello to my friend nonverbally. It turned out some my classmates knew more of the complexities of kissing than I did at the time. When I focus on this early memory, my stuttering returns the same as if I focus on early stuttering memories.
A paradox is, �Why would my emotions linked to stuttering go back to age two when my stuttering started at age six?� This is what I have developed to explain this seeming contradiction. I was very sick most of the time until I was two years old and did not even start talking until near my third birthday. As an infant, when I was fearful I would call for help in any way I could. My movements and sounds I used to signal for assistance became linked to the fearful emotions I felt when I was calling for help. My speech developed linking to these same powerful fears. This pattern of infant fears linking to my preverbal calls for help set the foundation for a lifetime of fearful communication. These earliest emotions became lost or disassociated from the original event that created them. Although the emotional memories were lost, they were certainly never forgotten.
Over last few years I began studying my secondary stuttering behaviors when answering the telephone. I found some secondary head and arm motions powerfully integrated into my speech. Through will power, I was unsuccessful at stopping these motions associated with the telephone. This very frustrating exercise felt similar to attempting to stop one�s stuttering by just trying harder. Using EMDR I started exploring my telephone answering motions. I thought this process might help to dissipate some of the force of these events. I traced my secondary behaviors back through earlier and earlier memories. I then found my secondary motions and my telephone speech blocking both linked to the same core memory from when I was about two years old. I was surprised to find such early roots for my secondary stuttering behavior. By processing through the emotional aspects of my nauseous/trouble breathing memory, my telephone blocking and my secondary motions are both starting to lessen.
I find it remarkable what I can now remember from so long ago. The details of my earliest infant memories I primarily retained as a series of motions and sounds when I was attempting to call for help. I have also reclaimed some of the fearful emotions originally linked to these events. When I feel fear connected to my stuttering, I now understand where this energy is originally from. My fear of stuttering has exactly the same feel as what I experienced in these early memories. I feel I reframed my fear of stuttering by understanding how this relates to a preverbal time when I was sick and frightened.
Exploring my earliest memories was often an emotionally painful process. I would often need time to accept the powerful emotions I discovered. I sometimes found my path to earlier memories blocked. When I became comfortable with some newly found memories, it would then become possible to travel to the next level of my journey. The deeper I explored into my past, the more afraid I became of what I might find next. Although fearful, I felt continuing this journey of discovery was not only important to me personally but also might help to add to the general understanding of how stuttering develops.
It has taken me years to begin understanding the complexity of my stuttering. Before starting this project, some core memories were not directly accessible to me. I could view this emotional core only when a stuttering episode was triggered. Unconsciously, I was adding energy to my core memories with each sound repetition, speech block or word avoidance. Strangely the repetition of stuttering may help to maintain the power of my earliest memories. A lifetime of stuttering, I feel, has allowed this intense and exciting opportunity for exploration through my childhood.
I am carefully recording my travels into some lost but never forgotten memories. With help from EMDR therapy I discovered how the powerful emotions of fear and embarrassment have influenced my speech throughout my life. By reclaiming my early fears, I feel I have just begun a lifelong journey of exploration. I believe that with a better general understanding of how preverbal communication connects with speech production, it might be possible to open some new treatment options to people who stutter.
Perhaps the most important concept explored here is that the fear I feel when I am struggling in a speech block is not really about stuttering or even speech production. These emotions linked to my stuttering are from a time before I even learned to speak. My early fears feel the same as when I am stuck in a speech block. I think this energy not only feels the same but is in fact the very same fear I locked away over fifty years ago. Memories of some preverbal communications have just been replaying themselves over and over again. I believe this fearful repetition is the very essence and structure of my stuttering.
Dale Sander
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