Is Aiming For Fluency A Good Methodology For Stutterers?
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Is Aiming For Fluency A Good Methodology For Stutterers? I've been stuttering since age 5. It's gone up and down. I've thought about all sorts of methodologies when it comes to dealing with your stutter. The first methodology in high school I thought was, if you have a stutter....why not just counter the stutter? Just fight the stutter. Aim for fluency. Try your best to enunciate words without a stutter. After years of failure I realized that I was just looking at it the wrong way. That is the wrong methodology, because you are only making things worse by putting pressure on yourself and hating yourself for stuttering. Trying to not stutter is a sure shot way to stutter as severely as possible. So after that, my philosophy was, just let it be. Just talk with a stutter, don't care. But I am still frustrated because my stutter is still severe and I cannot have basic conversations with people easily. And another weird thing...........accepting my stutter has seemed to have some sort of weird self image reinforcement thing. By accepting my stutter, I seem to have given it more power and let it define me. WHAT!? When I was 15 years old I barely stuttered because my self confidence was so high, I didn't even think of my stutter. So now I am rethinking all my methodologies. Maybe aiming for fluency isn't so bad? I just want to talk easily and its not coming out! Accepting my stutter hasn't seemed to help. How do you aim for fluency though? I recently gave a presentation and tried to speak fluently, and it had the opposite effect. It made me stutter more.