Living well with stuttering

To celebrate International Stuttering Awareness Day on Tuesday 22 October 2013, Selena Donaldson, speech and language therapist for The Fluency Network at The University of Auckland hosted an informative breakfast seminar. This seminar featured a pre-recorded question and answer session with Sam Simpson and Rachel Everard, two of the co-authors of ‘Stammering Therapy From the Inside’. This event marked the opening of The Fluency Network at The University of Auckland, New Zealand’s newest service for people who
stammer.

Sam and Rachel introduced the concept of ‘living well with stuttering’. They discussed the idea of therapy supporting living with stuttering in a more comfortable way and deconstructed the common misconception that stuttering is something that has to be ‘fixed’. Sam and Rachel acknowledged that there is a range of approaches to stuttering therapy, and that the therapy process parallels a journey, in which a person may try different things at different points in life. They emphasised the importance of being transparent with clients about the type of approach taken, and the theoretical base behind it. Rachel stated from her own personal experience of stammering that although there are useful fluency shaping techniques available, those techniques can be difficult to apply in practice, unless the person becomes more open and accepting of their stuttering.

During this seminar, Sam and Rachel also spoke of self-disclosure. They emphasised the importance of not viewing stuttering as something that needs to be hidden, and promoted the value of stuttering being acknowledged by family and friends. They also emphasised the speech and language therapists’ role in offering clients a flexible model of therapy to help clients on their journey towards self-acceptance. These were concepts I have recently explored with a client at the University of Auckland Fluency Network Clinic. My client was interested in fluency shaping and the freedom approach to stuttering as well. Self-disclosure proved to be a highly powerful tool for this client, who was initially apprehensive about self-advertising and voluntary stuttering due to his past negative experiences. Having independently decided to self-disclose in a group situation outside of the therapy environment, he reported the experience to have been positive, stating, “the stutter doesn’t define me”.

It was wonderful to hear from Sam and Rachel, across the world, on International Stuttering Awareness Day, and to open the University’s new service with their astute and holistic clinical reflections.

Irene Yap
Master of Speech Language Therapy (Practice), final year student
The University of Auckland