Healthy people view themselves as innately valuable, worthwhile, lovable, and having dignity. They have nothing to prove, but everything to experience. They go about life exploring and enjoying those relationships and experiences that life offers. They do not let the judgment of others, much less the perceived judgments of others, affect them. Indeed, information from other people provides feedback on how they are doing as a human being, and which areas need their attention. Actually, once they reach that level of acceptance, most have already quit blocking and stuttering or have made major progress towards fluency.
To gain fluency, it is essential that a PWS learns how to apply one thought to another (see Exercise 3.5). When a person can access their resources at will, they can maintain state control, and maintaining state control is the key to overcoming blocking. Indeed, learning how to maintain state control is the key to much in life. The people who block whom I have assisted to become proficient at managing their own states in all contexts are able to transfer those states of fluency into contexts that formerly led to blocking. Relationship with our thoughts
People sometimes develop poor relationships with their thoughts. If they are fearful about what something means, that affects how they respond to it, and creates a problem. Improving that relationship leads to overcoming the problem. In the present context, the PWS’s relationship with their thoughts leads eventually to blocking. Ways to change your relationship with your thoughts was the subject of the ground-breaking work of Albert Ellis. Together with pioneer thinker Aaron Beck they are credited as being the fathers of Cognitive Psychology (of which NLP and Neuro-Semantics are branches). Ellis (1976) expounded his understanding of mind-body thus:
Human thinking and emoting are not radically different processes; but at points significantly overlap. Emotions almost always stem directly from ideas, thoughts, attitudes, beliefs… and can usually be radically changed by modifying the thinking processes that keep creating them.
Ellis became renowned for his list of ten Cognitive Distortions. Cognitive Therapy aims to correct these cognitive distortions or faulty thought patterns – the type of thinking that frequently leads to depression (something many PWS suffer from on a regular basis; for them, “life is depressing”). Clinicians can benefit from a knowledge of this list of distorted thinking because the PWS usually demonstrates these distortions in their thinking. This list is based on Burns (1989):
All or nothing thinking – Another name for “black and white thinking”. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. This polarity thinking sorts the world of events and people in two extremes: good–bad, right–wrong, love–hate, and so on. Mapping the world in this fashion ignores the subtleties of life; the world has in-betweens, shades of gray. Failure to consider the middle zone can give rise to fundamentalism. The PWS exemplifies this by describing themselves in absolute terms: “I can’t even talk. I am a total failure and always will be.”
Overgeneralization – The PWS experiences a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. This behavior explains how those experiences in childhood (being pointed out, embarrassed, judged, abused and so on) continue into adulthood perceived as hopeless to change.
Mental filter – Concentrating so strongly on one aspect of a task or a situation to the exclusion of all else. The PWS becomes obsessive about trying to avoid blocking and stuttering.
Disqualifying the positive – The world is interpreted in a way that reinforces negative feelings and explains away positive ones. The PWS who is caught up in this is genuinely depressed about their blocking. They reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for whatever reason, and maintain negative beliefs even though they are contradicted by everyday experiences. For instance, even though most PWS have consistently demonstrated fluency, many still hold to the belief that, “I have always blocked and stuttered and I always will.” Their own fluency fails to convince them that blocking and stuttering is a learned behavior and that it can be unlearned.
Jumping to conclusions – Despite the lack of facts to substantiate their conclusion the PWS jumps to a negative interpretation. By their mind-reading shall you know them. As I have mentioned, PWS fear the judgments of others even when they do not know what is in the other person’s mind. This generates unnecessary anticipatory fear which leads to further blocking and stuttering.
Magnification and minimization – PWS have a tendency to Catastrophize – entertain only “worst-case scenarios”. This makes sense when you consider the worst-case scenario thinker learned this in childhood. With their childhood being filled with much pain, hurt and uncertainty, they come to expect bad things to happen and prepare themselves for it. They also Awfulize – always look on the dark side. Many PWS view their speech extremely negatively, and from there they personalize (see step 10) by identifying with this behavior.
Emotional reasoning – The PWS assumes their negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true” or “I feel it and hence my blocking and stuttering is a physical problem.” This type of thinking has led to the erroneous belief amongst speech pathologists that they need only treat the symptoms (the physical expression of blocking) rather than its cause (the mental frames that drive the blocking).
“Should” statements – Operating predominately by necessity, which escalates into should-ing and must-ing – which Ellis has humorously labeled “musterbation”. Thinking the world ought to be a certain way puts pressure on the PWS: it generates unnecessary and inappropriate shame, guilt, self-contempt and other similar unresourceful states.
PWS try to motivate themselves with shoulds and oughts, as though they must be punished before they can be expected to speak fluently. “I ought to be able
