Bobulating is effortless disfluency; it is not blocking because it often shows up when one is embarrassed, upset, confused or disoriented.
Harrison believes that to move from “bobulating” to blocking necessitates a certain way of perceiving speech and believing things about yourself and others. It invokes a specific sense of fear and apprehension, a certain attitude about how to cope and respond and this then coaches and trains the muscles involved in breathing to produce blocking.
For Harrison this means that there is a non-blocking mentality just as there is a blocking mentality. I agree totally. Notice in his Stuttering Hexagon how many of the six factors relate directly to the PWS’s thinking and the interaction of thinking with the body:
Intentions – what the person desires.
Beliefs – what the person affirms as true for them.
Perception – how the person’s model of reality reflects their experience.
Emotions – how the person feels about the experience.
Behaviors – how the person responds to their perceptions.
Physiological responses – the embodied consequences of their thinking. Dave Elman
The hypnotist Dave Elman (1900–1967) was inspired by his father to take up hypnosis. Elman went on to train medical doctors and dentists. He describes the times doctors brought stutterers to the classes on hypnosis that he taught hoping that he could help them. He spoke of the pity he felt for these children and even more so the distress he felt when he met an adult who had a similar problem. Concerning stuttering he concluded, “There is no such thing as a congenital stutter. A stutter or stammer must be precipitate.”
In the mid-twentieth century hypnosis was considered by many in the medical profession to be hocus pocus. However, Elman had a great understanding of cognition in addition to anatomy and physiology, and by limiting his trainings to doctors and dentists he successfully managed to make hypnosis more respectable. He knew that for hypnosis to work the cause of stuttering could not primarily be physical or inherited. He concluded:
It is my firm belief that every stutter has a basic, investigable cause. Over the years, I have tried to get doctors to change their attitude towards stutterers and treat the cause rather than the effect …
Even a minor trauma can, like suggestion, be compounded by repetition. Every stutter has its beginning in a situation in which the victim reaches a point where he doesn’t want to talk and yet is obliged to.
In other words, he firmly believed that blocking was caused by traumatic situations.Carl H. Scott
Carl H. Scott, a California State licensed and ASHA-certified speech pathologist, suggests that blocking should not be treated just as a physical problem but as a cognitive problem. In working with people who block, he “considers the whole person and works toward a balance in mind, body and spirit.” Scott has a three stage approach for therapy with people who block:
The first stage in this healing process is to guide the individual to identify the beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, feelings and behavior that may serve as obstacles in daily living and in accessing fluency.
The second stage is this therapeutic journey calls for initiating a healing process. This may involve working with his inner child, dialog or forgiveness.
The third stage of therapy is to guide the person who blocks into a healthy belief system with new and powerful positive thoughts and the ability to experience self acceptance and love. It also calls for manifesting changes in behavior. Tim Mackesey
The speech pathologist and former stutterer, Tim Mackesey, writes about his experience using the tools that work most effectively in these cases:
Neuro-Semantics and the NLP Drop Down Through Pattern offer great possibilities in the treatment of stuttering. Traditional speech therapy has centered around modifications at the behavioral level (i.e., breathing, easy onset of speech, light articulatory contacts, etc). The perceived stigma of stuttering and the overwhelming urge to “not stutter” often overpower behavioral level strategies. Periodic relapse after treatment is common. The missing Holy Grail from traditional speech therapy has been a consistent, swift, and thorough reframing strategy for meta-states to alleviate the pre-stutter phenomenon. Situation and word-specific anchors form along the timeline of stuttering development. As an NLP practitioner and person with a residual, mild stutter, I was game to explore the Drop Down Through process personally. I have experienced a significant increase in spontaneous fluency after just a few telephone consultations with Bob.
The Drop Down Through technique is explained in Chapter 6. Systemic thinking
Current neuro-scientific thinking confirms our conjecture that the mind-body system works as a systemic whole and parts cannot be separated, and that as a consequence, emotions can and do find expression in particular areas of the body.
When a person has a panic attack, there are definitely physical symptoms. The bible for describing mental and emotional disorders used by those practitioners of counseling and psychiatry in the United States is The American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic Criteria better known as the DSM-IV. DSM-IV offers this description on diagnosing a panic attack:
A Panic Attack is a discrete period in which there is the sudden onset of intense apprehension, fearfulness, or terror often associated with feelings of impending doom. During these attacks, symptoms such as shortness of breath, palpitations, chest pain or discomfort, choking or smothering sensations and fear of going “crazy” or losing control are present. [italics added]
I have put the psychosomatic symptoms in italics. If you were to move the expression of those emotions to those areas of the body which control speaking then you have blocking. The structure is the same; the expressions are different. Reframe or heal the emotions and the physical expression disappears.Beyond Stammering: The McGuire Programme For Getting Good At The Sport of Speaking
The McGuire Program for people who stutter is one of the better known methodologies for gaining more fluency. It has wide acceptance and is used extensively. This program as well recognizes the psychological issues surrounding
