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SHEDDING NEW LIGHT ON A CHALLENGING PROBLEM REDEFINING STUTTERING • What the struggle to A Guide to Recovery speak is really all about • This book was previously published under the title How to Conquer Your Fears of Speaking before People. SECOND REVISED EDITION by JOHN C. HARRISON National Stuttering Association Now is the time A Guide to Recovery REDEFINING STUTTERING What the struggle to speak is really all about by JOHNby JOHN C. H C.ARRISON HARRISON National Stuttering Association This book was previously published under the title How to Conquer Your Fears of Speaking before People. SECOND REVISED EDITION WORDS THAT WORK San Francisco Copyright © 2009 by John C. Harrison ISBN 1-929773-08-4 Second Revised Edition All rights reserved. This book is available as a free download from several web sites. Simply enter "Redefining Stuttering" in the browser search box. Printed copies are available from Amazon or from The National Stuttering Association, 119 W. 40th Street, 14th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10018. [email protected]. For those who are reading a PDF (electronic) version of this book and would like to turn it into a paperback: The book has been formatted for two-sided printing on any electronic copier capable of printing on both sides of the sheet. It is recommended that you use a heavier, colored paper for the front cover. You may also want to protect the book with a clear vinyl sheet at the front and a colored vinyl sheet at the back. Spiral binding is recommended. Be what you is, cuz if you be what you ain't, you ain't what you is. Grave marker, Boot Hill Cemetery, Tombstone, Arizona Life goes on, and so must he. From the moment he gives himself up, and to the extent that he does so, all unknowingly he sets about to create and maintain a pseudo-self. But this is a "self" without wishes. He’ll go through the motions, not for fun or joy, but for survival; because he has to obey. From now on he will be torn apart by unconscious, compulsive needs or ground by unconscious conflicts into paralysis, every motion and every instant canceling out his being and his integrity; and all the while he is disguised as a normal person and expected to behave like one! G. Allport Quoted in Towards a Psychology of Being We are changed by what we do, not by what we think about, or read about, but by what we actually do. Winston Churchill vbvbvbvbv Foreword i FOREWORD O ne summer evening during the early 80s I was sitting in the living room of John Ahlbach, then the Executive Director of the National Stutter- ing Project*, having a few beers and talking about this and that. It was almost 11 p.m., and we’d just concluded a meeting of the San Francisco NSP chapter. It had been one of those slow evenings where only a few people showed up. In fact, that particular summer our local chapter hadn’t been doing too well. Attendance had dwindled down to only four or so each meeting, and sometimes not even that. It was an intense conversation, because John and I had something in common that had significantly impacted our lives—we both grew up with a chronic stuttering problem. And we were both committed to helping others break out of their stuttering prison. My dysfluency suddenly appeared when I was three and a half. My mother had gone on a six-week European trip with my grandmother, and when she returned, I took her out to the garden and—so my mother recalls— pointed to a row of petunias and said, “Mommy, look…look…look…look at…at…at…the flowers.” Chronic stuttering plagued me all the way through my late 20s. I was never a severe stutterer, undoubtedly because I never allowed myself to develop the often bizarre struggle behavior characteristic of those who forcibly try and push through a block. I would simply outwait the block and suffer the long silences. Nevertheless, being of a sensitive nature, those unexplained long pauses would mortify me. I could talk just fine when I was chatting with friends. But if I had to recite in class or speak to an authority figure or stop a stranger on the street to ask a question, I would often lock right up. Eventually I became a “closet stutterer”—that is, the kind of person who could pass for “normal” but who always feared that at any moment his awful secret would be revealed. Not much happened to change my stuttering until one day, at the age of 25, I abruptly quit my job at my father’s ad agency, boarded a 707, and *In 1999 the board of directors of the National Stuttering Project voted to change the organization's name to the National Stuttering Association, since the organization long ago outgrew its identity as a project. Consequently, you will find references to both the NSP and the NSA throughout this edition. ii Foreword left New York City for San Francisco. The personal growth movement was just beginning in California in the early 60s, and San Francisco was right at the center of it. In short order, I was involved in various growth activities including encounter groups, 48-hour non-sleep “awareness” marathons, several LSD trips, two years of psychodrama classes, gestalt therapy groups, Toastmasters meetings, and the like. By the time the 60s had drawn to a close, thanks to all this internal probing, I had a much better handle on my inner self. As a by-product of those self-exploratory activities, my stuttering gradually disappeared. What’s more, I felt I understood things about the essential nature of chronic stuttering that other people—even the profes- sionals—didn’t know. I saw that my speech problem was really an extension of my larger life issues—a system involving my entire self. Although I had seen stuttering as primarily a speech problem, it turned out to really be about my difficulties with the experience of communicating to others. No wonder I never stuttered when I was alone. But who could I share this with? I found the answer in 1977 when Bob Goldman and Michael Sugarman, two fellows in their 20s living in near-by Walnut Creek, started the National Stuttering Project, a self-help organization for people who stuttered. Finally, I had a place where I could put my insights to good use. I quickly joined the NSP, eventually became the pro bono associate director, and played an active role in the development of the organization….which was how I ended up in John Ahlbach’s living room that evening, trying to figure out how to breathe life into our local NSP chapter. Groups tend to go through peaks and valleys, and our chapter was definitely in a valley. These undulations are undoubtedly a reflection of many things — group dynamics, schedules, weather, personal initiative, creativity, and what all. Each group has its own chemistry, and that particular summer we seemed to be a lackluster bunch. As John and I sipped our beers, our conversation drifted to how the other NSP groups were doing. Houston, of course, was our shining light. And Philadelphia and Southern California were also doing well. But there were other chapters that had written to John about attendance problems similar to ours. What could we do to help them? The most common complaint was a lack of direction and purpose. We did have a standard meeting format we’d written up in a brochure. But even with that, people were feeling that they were doing the same old stuff. That’s when I got the idea to put together a book on public speaking. Although public speaking had always terrified me, it also held me in its thrall. In my mind’s eye, I could picture myself speaking passionately in front of a crowd. After I joined the National Stuttering Project, fantasy Foreword iii became reality. I began to find opportunities to speak in front of others in a non-threatening environment. I organized and ran my first workshop —a two-day affair no less!—in 1982 for about 15 NSP members. I ran local chapter meetings. Slowly I became more comfortable in the role of speaker. Encouraged by my growing confidence, I started observing other people who were really good speakers. I tried to get inside their skin. What were they feeling? What were they doing? What made them charismatic? What made them confident? As I talked to John that summer evening, the thought struck me: why not write a manual on public speaking. Eventually, I came up with 10 lessons, each one drawn from another observation I had made about good speakers and the specific things they did. As an afterthought, I also included an essay on overcoming performance fears that I felt directly related to the speaking experience. The manual was titled How to Conquer Your Fears of Speaking before People, and the 50-page first edition was cranked out on a dot-matrix printer. The manual turned out to be popular with a number of NSP chapters. The exercises were simple, they were easy to use, and chapter members could provide valuable feedback for each other. Very slowly, news began to dribble in of chapters using the book as a supplement to their regular programs. Feedback was good. People were finding that the information and exercises really helped to lessen the fear of speaking before groups by giving people ways to perceive the speaking situation in a different light.