In the last few months new progress has been made at solving my speech development puzzle. New connections are showing why my speech evolved with stuttering and blocking. I made a choice to rediscover and share my story without knowing where it might lead. It's often exciting to follow the emotional energy through my childhood but I'm not always pleased with what I find. Since much of what I have unlocked is so far outside the main stream of speech therapy, I can see why an informed person might see it as totally unbelievable. Before I started this EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) journey, I too would have been extremely skeptical of my current conclusions.
My life was mostly in order before I started EMDR. It was probably very helpful that I had previously dealt with many of my adult stuttering issues. After a few sessions of EMDR my stuttering became worse. I was about to give up on this experimental approach to speech therapy when I had an important breakthrough. Since high school I would often find my right hand clenched but not know why. I found the clenching was linked to a childhood stuttering memory rich in recovered emotional energy. Although I saw little speech improvement in the following weeks, my right hand did start to relax. I gained some insight into how powerful this new therapy could be. As the work continued I found my greatest progress was when my stuttering increased. As I have journeyed through the emotional layers of my childhood, I've repeatedly seen this correlation of decreased fluency linked to new progress. This decreased fluency was sometimes followed by dramatic fluency improvements and important insights about my childhood.
A pivotal link was discovered between my early memories of mom and dad arguing and my adult stuttering. I am very surprised by what I learned from viewing those arguments. Most surprising was the way they were integrated into my speech. My dad was generally very polite and soft spoken. He rarely showed any emotion except when his anger would explode. His anger would show itself generally as verbal abuse towards my mom. At some point he would just slam the door and leave. When I was a young witness to these tantrums, I of course felt very scared. I also felt it was not safe to talk or even cry, until the yelling stopped and the door slammed! I would feel a sudden flood of emotion when the door slammed. Blocked crying and blocked speech formed a powerful subconscious link to my fear of anger. My EMDR work has vividly completed my early memories with a wealth of emotions.
At age six I had completed a year of speech therapy and was starting to stutter. My mom says I started speech therapy because I was so quiet. My speech therapist listed "articulatory problems" as the reason I started speech therapy. After a year of therapy my therapist recommend I be discharged because of good progress. Challenging childhood speaking situations were occurring in first grade and I would have logically drawn on my limited speaking knowledge. My prior experience of fear linked to blocked speech and crying was what I used to meet this new emotional challenge. Amazingly, my adult stuttering now sometimes feels like blocked childhood crying. Conversely, when using EMDR to look at childhood crying memories the similarity to stuttering is unsettling. I now see fear, blocked speech and blocked crying as a powerful triad from which my stuttering emerged. The way my early emotions integrated into my speech now seem strangely logical when viewed from my six years old perspective.
An irony is that much of what I did when trying to improve my speech pulled me from the roots of my disorder. When I stuttered as a child I tried escaping my fears by talking very fast, word switching and using other secondary stuttering behaviors. Speech therapies that worked to change my natural speaking pattern, although sometimes helpful, I also see as an attempt to help me elude my fears. Escape may help to improve speech temporarily but it further obscures the stuttering fear foundation. I now see my stuttering as positive because it sometimes helps me to unlock important early memories.
With traditional psychotherapy the therapist uses his or her training and experience to lead you through your past events. This process can be very successful especially when the enemy's location is known. I think this basic process of leading by the therapist may be part of the reason that most of the psychotherapy work with stutterers has historically failed. With an EMDR therapist you are taught to follow your emotional energy without any idea of where it may lead. I see the very foundation of EMDR as its complete lack of preconceived ideas related to cause and effect. Many articles have been written both pro and con about EMDR therapy. EMDR is said to work the way REM sleep works in memory processing but the scientific evidence seems unconvincing. I have found EMDR to be an excellent therapy for the exploration into some usually inaccessible areas of my mind. Subconscious neural links can be examined as never before by following their energy flow. As necessary, outdated links are dissolved and new links established. Simply put, I regard EMDR as a self guided journey of discovery with a wise adviser to help along the way.
This example of stuttering described here by C. Dell seems especially relevant: (1994, The suffering we all share. In J. Ahlbach & V. Benson (Eds), To say What is ours: The best of "Letting Go", p. 160, San Francisco: National Stuttering Project)
There are now many times when I'm determined to face my listener and control my spasms only to find my jaw jerking and my mouth frozen in despair. I had intended to grab the devil by the throat and wring its bloody neck, but instead I'm defeated again.
A wide range of stuttering fears are discussed by people who stutter. A few examples of fear linked stuttering are embarrassment when stuttering, word fear, fear of speaking to a group and fear of answering the phone. Even some usually fluent people experience fear and stuttering when public speaking. The NSA (National Stuttering Association) has support groups to help people let go of their stuttering fears. This self help therapeutic approach has had many success stories. It's common to hear of a stuttering episode being linked to a personal fear. Perhaps someday the idea of fear being fundamentally involved with the original cause of stuttering may also be common.
Dale Sander
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