Day One - Decide

Hi. My name is Warrick Sullivan and I am on a quest for a life of fluency, free from stuttering and I will document step by step how I do it so others can learn from my successes and my failures. So here it goes.

Day One - Decide.
I know, it sounds like a no brainer, but believe it or not, there are reasons why a person may not be willing to give up their stutter. A persons stutter does have a positive intent. A person does not stutter because they are flawed, or defective in any way. In 99% of cases, it is a learned behaviour, most commonly from childhood and was learned to fill some sort of emotional need in that person. Not everyone reasons are the same, so this needs to be done on an individual basis, but rest assured, there is (or was) a need that is being served from a stutter. In a lot of cases, the need was developed as a child, and as the person grows up, they no longer have the need any more, but the behaviour is ingrained so remains in the adult. We need to establish any secondary gains from stuttering and replace them with a more resourceful way of satisfying the need before a person can truly free themselves of a stutter.

The question you need to ask yourself is, what do I get out of stuttering?

Common responses are:

• To protect me from being hurt,
• To get attention and make people notice me,
• To give me a sense of control. I can not control the outside world but I can control my speech, so I will block.
• To get back at my parents, teachers, therapists or peers.

For me personally, my stutter protects me from saying stupid things. It protects me from putting myself out there, and getting ridiculed and made a fool of. It has saved me on so many occasions throughout the years.

Also, about five years ago, I discovered a 5 day course in Scotland which boasted a cure for stuttering. At the time, I was living in New Zealand, so Scotland was pretty much exactly on the opposite side of the globe. Once all of the plans were made, all the flights were booked and everything was official, I started to lose a lot of sleep about the strangest thing. Without realising it, I started to worry that this course might actually do everything it claims to do. In my mind, there was a very real possibility that in less than a week, I could be totally fluent. And it totally freaked me out. Why was I scared of fluency??? What was holding me back???

Thinking about it now, I believe I was frightened by the responsibility of a clean slate. Suddenly, any lack of success in my life would be squarely placed on my shoulders. I would suddenly be able to gain success, so instantly gained the responsibility and expectation to accomplish it. I would have on-one or nothing left to blame. I would suddenly be solely accountable for my own destiny. It scared me... a lot.

The thing to realise is that all these internal forces will be working against you if they are not addressed up front, and you will find yourself not fully involved, or even subconsciously sabotaging your efforts towards fluency. Not intellectually, but subconsciously.

To correct this, you need to align your beliefs so that every fibre of your body is working TOWARDS your outcome. In this case, fluency.

Talk soon.
Warrick Sullivan
http://www.fluencyquest.com