These statements are typical of the clients I work with. Needless to say, such experiences are not conducive to creating a sense of power and resourcefulness in one’s life. Growing up in a family where the environment is chaotic and unpredictable will in many cases lead a person to believe they are powerless. They often grow up without a sense of being in control. Sometimes people who put a high value on control try to compensate by becoming control freaks, wanting to control everything and everyone around them. When they discover that the world cannot easily be controlled, they then perceive the world as failing them(as their parents failed them) and develop a sense of helplessness and powerlessness. The more their control strategy fails to work, the more powerless and helpless they feel.
In many cases, people who have been overwhelmed with pain in childhood, and even adulthood, give control over to others. They just tend to give up. Think of the statements in Figure 2.4 as expressing a lack of personal control.
To reveal something about the childhood environment that led to the creation of the beliefs that life was out of control and that they must work to maintain control, ask the PWS: “How long has your life been out of control?” “When did you first sense that you had no control over your environment?”
“As a child my parents just ignored me.” “My parents were fast talkers. “I was on the ‘outside’.” “My parents insisted: ‘you’ve got to get it out’.” “In school I never ‘fit in’.” “In my home showing emotions was a sign of weakness.” “I got teased a lot.” “My parents divorced when I was five years old.” “I was never good enough.” “I only saw my dad on the weekends. He was a workaholic and was gone a lot.” “My parents wanted me to be perfect.” “I always wanted to impress my dad so he would love me.” “I had to be seen, but not heard.” “I felt suffocated.” “My parents were constantly fighting, and I just used to hide in my room.” “My parents were ashamed of my stuttering.”
Figure 2.4: Beliefs about lack of personal control
If the PWS grew up in an environment that was safe, secure, and that gradually allowed them to take more and more control over their life, they will gladly answer positively. However, if security was under-represented during their early years, they probably cannot answer. Then you have to help them find examples of being in control despite those factors. There is usually some area of life in which they did have a sense of control, even if that meant rebelling against their parents in some way. They could self-harm, engage in drug-abuse or develop eating disorders. These could all be seen as expressions of “being in control of your own life”. Alan used his stuttering as a means of getting back at his parents. He perceived that they were out of control so Alan chose to use stuttering to demonstrate that he could control his speech. It was a way for him to say, “I will show you. I am not totally at your mercy.”
Childhood is a time of confusing emotions anyway, but when the child is not listened to or taken seriously, it is hardly surprising that they turn inward and find other ways to deal with their emotions. Despite their best efforts they can never meets the needs of their parents or significant others, so they express themselves in the only way they can, and this may result in trying to control their own bodies and in inhibiting the muscles which control breathing and speech. These childhood patterns provide some kind of relief, but this continues and contributes to their blocking in later life.
Developing a sense of power and resourcefulness is absolutely essential in overcoming blocking. The psychologist Martin Seligman (1975, 1990) researched “Learned Helplessness” and “Learned Optimism”. His work speaks clearly about how a person develops learned helplessness in becoming a victim of the blocking rather than taking control and becoming optimistic about overcoming the behaviour. The 3Ps of learned helplessness
Personal: People who block tend to personalize their disfluency. They tend to identify with the badness of their speech. “My speech is flawed, and so am I.” It is as if the individual is thinking, “As I speak, so I am.”
Pervasive: The person generalizes from their disfluency in language and assumes that their flawed nature extends to other activities in their life. Everything in every part of their life must be bad.
I hear many sad stories from people who block who have chosen not to go for advanced education; who spend hours studying a thesaurus to find substitute words for those they usually block on; who cannot ask someone out for a date; who do not apply for advancement at work, and so on, all because of how they speak on some occasions. It is heart-breaking to hear how this one issue can so permeate and determine someone’s life.
Permanent: After years of failed attempts at gaining fluency, many people come to believe that their stuttering will last forever. “I have done this since I was a child; I have tried everything; I have spent thousands of dollars … and I still stutter.” It is no wonder that they tend to develop a sense of helplessness about the problem.
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