What is the essence of the nature and mechanisms of stuttering?
There is a very good example in the world literature that helps to understand the nature of stuttering. Alan Marshall, in I Can Jump Over Puddles, describes one woman who had long and ugly hair on her chin. The people around her wondered why she didn’t shave him off. And the fact is that if she shaved him off, she would admit the fact of his existence. It would take the courage to admit your flaw, to face something unattractive about yourself.
This comparison allows us to understand one aspect of stuttering. The stutter (in the overwhelming majority of cases) tries to hide his flaw, deny, reject it, throw great efforts so that no one understands that he is stuttering. He constantly struggles with his stuttering.
That is, the stutter denies the fact of his stuttering. It also manifests itself in the fact that the stutter during speech makes a lot of efforts to hide it.
How will a person who denies the existence of his hand behave? He will hide his hand, disguise it, he will be afraid that someone will understand what he is hiding, he will be constantly worried. The more he hides his hand, the more attention he will pay to it, the weirder he will look in the eyes of others.
The situation is similar with stuttering. The more a person tries not to stutter, the more he begins to tense, which subsequently intensifies the stuttering. A person cannot think about something pointless. If he thinks about breathing, that is the thought of breathing; if he thinks about not breathing, then this is also the thought of breathing. If a person thinks about his stutter, this is the thought of stuttering, but if he thinks about not stuttering, then this is the same thought. Also, the state of stuttering is highly charged emotionally. Anxiety, fears and other negative emotions accompany a stuttering person.
These reflections lead to some very interesting conclusions. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that it is useless to fight stuttering. This only strengthens it. I really want not to stutter, but it is with this very desire that I create and intensify stuttering. Isn't it paradoxical?
This probably plays a key role in the fact that speech problems usually begin to subside in a stuttering person after midlife. At this age, they are simply already leaving the irreconcilable position that was before.
If stuttering is painfully perceived by a person, he may have a desire not to speak or speak as little as possible, i.e. do not expose yourself to such unpleasant sensations. He begins to move away from the situations of speaking themselves, to think about how to say less or not say at all, withdraws into himself.
This phenomenon is called the "log paradox" and is described by V. Levy. If a log lies on the ground, then it is very easy to walk on it, if you raise it by a meter, then it is more difficult to walk, but if by 20 meters, then it is simply impossible for an unprepared person to walk. In the latter case, a person begins to think about how not to fall. That is, he directs his efforts to thoughts about the fall, thereby programming and forming those awkward movements that will prevent him from passing. The same mechanism applies to stuttering.
