I am 49 years old and have had speech problems all my life. I was in traditional speech therapy ages five through fifteen and have experienced the classic stuttering symptoms from age six. I had this idea that Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) might help my speech a little. I contacted a former speech therapist now working as a counselor specializing in EMDR and she agreed to give it a try. EMDR is a new type of psychotherapy originated and developed by Francine Shapiro. I now have a powerful new insight as to why my stuttering has been such a struggle all these years. The first important idea to evolve from the EMDR work was that my speech blocking was a "short flash" into some buried emotions of childhood. Before starting EMDR therapy I thought I had an unusually clear recall of my childhood memories. The emotional energy I repeatedly found linked to these early memories, was a complete surprise.
I started the EMDR therapeutic process a year and a half ago. It has been a journey of discovery beyond anything that I might have ever imagined. I had no sense when starting this new therapy that I was even embarking on a journey. I also had no idea exactly what I was looking for, but I do very much like solving puzzles. Since I had been working on this stuttering puzzle for about forty years, I had a few small clues. I thought whatever may have gone wrong with my speech development the answer should be in my past. I hoped that EMDR might help find another piece the puzzle.
The question that usually comes up first is, "Has my EMDR work improved my speech?" Yes, at times. This seems less important, though, as times go on. All speech therapies generally will make you less fluent at first and improve your speech for a time. This therapy seems different though. The insights I have gained about the inner workings of my mind seem to far outweigh a mere fluency improvement. I say this with all sincerity; even if there were no long-term fluency improvement with EMDR, it would still be a valuable tool for speech research.
Before starting my EMDR work, a childhood memory had recently been causing me some confusion. I had some emotion associated with a childhood memory where none had existed before. My mother had asked me walk down to the corner to pickup something for dinner when I was about twelve. Seeing a speech block before I had even left, I begged her to not make me go. I did not tell her the real reason why I did not want to go. I went to the store and came back empty handed. With the early EMDR work, I quickly found the missing memory components. My mom had uncharacteristically gotten angry when I was unable to complete this task. My recovered emotional energy was of fear and embarrassment. I carefully explored a variety of early childhood memories, many of which seemingly had nothing to do with speech. Missing memories of fear and embarrassment showed up repeatedly over the following months. So far, only small traumas have surfaced from my childhood. Except for my stuttering memories, I don't see my childhood as especially unusual.
The first improvement in my speech was after about six months of EMDR work. My EMDR sessions were targeting an early childhood memory when my out of control stuttering would end with me gasping for air. I was taken by surprise when my speech fears dramatically decreased when I was talking to strangers. This was the group I generally had the most fluency problems with. When I was attending a meeting of a local club, I first saw a change in my speech pattern. Although I'd been going to their general meetings for about three years, this was the first new member meeting I attended. When I walked in, I noticed I knew no one in the group of about twenty people. The meeting started with the dreaded, "We will go around the room and introduce ourselves." Not only was my speech fluent, I felt no fear about the introduction process. To my surprise, my speech did not improve when talking to close friends and family.
After about two more months of EMDR therapy, I was processing a memory of an argument between my mom and dad when I was about five years old. As with many of my childhood events, I discovered much buried fear to explore. Three evenings later I started shaking in what felt like a very early flashback. I had some very scary motions in my right arm and my upper body. When I would breath out completely it would trigger the body motions. I had worked with some less intense body memories in the past months and thought these new flashbacks could be easily processed though. I was wrong. For the next several sessions I could find no childhood links to any of these flashbacks. The only link to show up was when I was about twenty-five and I experienced hypothermia. The shaking has continued every day, especially when I am waking up or going to sleep.
My EMDR work felt completely blocked for about three months. I did not find any links to the very early upper body oscillations until after it was linked to my stuttering. In a seemingly uneventful EMDR session, I felt a transition of my upper body oscillations to my common stuttering reflex in my neck. In this session my upper body back and forth oscillations moved smoothly up into my neck. As this metamorphosis occurred the oscillations rotated to my familiar up and down stuttering motion. There was little emotional energy in this unusual session. I had a sense of being given a wondrous view of my stuttering developing in my young body. My speech experienced a dramatic fluency improvement for the next several weeks.
The subconscious body memories are starting to come together like pieces of a very bizarre puzzle. The upper body oscillations feel like they come from a variety of causes: being sick and cold when I was an infant, being scared when my mom and dad would argue, nausea when I was young. The right arm motion was first linked to a memory when I was about six. I was playing with my new metal edged ruler sawing off an electric plug. I have no conscious memory of being shocked but my body memory suggests I had been. The right arm motions were linked a little later to the previously mentioned memory of when I would stutter to the point of running completely out of breath. Like most of the memories I have explored, a considerable amount of emotion was stored safely away. The greatest buried emotional energy I have found is in the stuttering memories throughout my childhood with their hundreds of thousands of repetitions.
I once heard a seemingly simple boat analogy of how memory works. When you are very young you learn that what you are playing with in your bath is call a boat. Later, when you see a small boat on a lake, that is added to your experience. Sometime after that you see a large ship on the ocean and you say, "boat." You have learned all of these are boats. Your earliest memory that all boats are in your bath is totally lost. As I have worked back though my childhood following the emotional energy, I see the same layering as the boat analogy. My early emotions of fear and embarrassment were stored in my subconscious separate from the conscious memories associated with them. The layering effect had caused an adult view of these emotions that completely lost their origins. I had totally lost, until recently, the early memory that fear was a shiver I felt only in my chest.
My early fears evolved to include fear of speech at about age six when stuttering became a problem. Before my stuttering had developed, I started speech therapy at age five because of articulation problems. I now see the progression in which my very young body's fear oscillations grew into stuttering oscillations. My speech blocking evolved from out of control stuttering where I would shut down for lack of breath. Conscious speech blocking developed to help avoid stuttering on problem words. As my unprocessed fear collected, it became an ever-increasing barrier to process my speech through. I currently feel the very early roots of my childhood fears when I stutter or block. I have a completely new sense of my early childhood because of the EMDR work.
Many people, especially men, have developed the ability to hold emotions deep inside. The way I learned to store fear and embarrassment was most important to my speech development. In my early childhood, when I experienced fear or embarrassment I apparently learned to automatically move it from my conscious mind. Although my early fears were moved, they were not erased. When I now revisit these powerful memories I see them as if frozen time. Although my childhood was only filled with small traumas, the very repetitive nature of stuttering dramatically increased their effect on my life. Every time I was fearful of a word or embarrassed by my stuttering, a very small trauma was safely stored away covering my earliest fears. With my speech fears beginning to dissolve, I can see the totally obscured fear foundation I carefully built. As an adult, I had been complimented on my ability to stay focused in times of crisis. As I have worked through this therapeutic process, I have become emotionally fragile at times. I spent many months grieving the loss of my speech block. It felt like I was losing a part who I am, a very scared little boy. By exploring and even embracing my earliest fears, my perception of the child I was and who I am now has forever changed. My new goal of greater emotional balance I think is the well within my reach.
This journey is most definitely a work in progress. My thoughts will continue to be molded as I voyage deeper into my past. A view of my stuttering with a subconscious fear trigger and my blocking with a conscious fear trigger currently seems to fit. Both of these triggers feel like they are processed thought the same neural pathways. I have read much about how fear and stuttering are linked. I was totally shocked, though, when I saw how my early buried fears were the actual cause of my stuttering. Many of my memory links I have discovered still feel too personal to discuss here. When some of these memories began unfolding, my mind would flash, oh no please don't let it be linked like that. I have found EMDR to be a very powerful tool. What started as idea to improve my speech a little has become a small research project on the origins of my stuttering and so much more.
Dale Sander
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