Stuttering
07-13-2004, 07:55 AM
Getting past the wall of stuttering
Sunday, July 11, 2004
By Tamara Lubic
The Grand Rapids Press
Most of us fear public speaking more than death, as studies have shown.
Those who struggle with stuttering feel that dread every day.
"It adversely affects all your relationships, but especially with the opposite sex," says Charles Gibson, who is self-employed as a registered piano technician. "Dating, being a teenager, going to college. It makes that period much more painful."
It can make those who stutter more susceptible to someone who offers a cure. A day before D.J. Dempsey, 20, of Grand Rapids, was to start culinary classes at Grand Rapids Community College, a stranger promised a cure when he also asked for Dempsey's help in unloading a truck.
Truck driver James D. Moore, of Osceola County, is scheduled to go on trial Monday, charged with raping and kidnapping Dempsey after allegedly drugging him with over-the-counter Benadryl pills.
After Dempsey's story became public, a group of compassionate friends and strangers raised funds for Dempsey to get a Fluency Master, a device invented about 20 years ago. It looks like a hearing aid and changes vocal feedback, with the goal of making stuttering speech more fluent.
Results were mixed for Dempsey, who is working as a dishwasher at San Chez restaurant in downtown Grand Rapids. He still is planning to pursue a degree in culinary arts at GRCC this fall.
About 3 million people in the United States stutter, according to the National Stuttering Association. It affects far more males. Stephen Tasko, an assistant professor of speech pathology and audiology at Western Michigan University, says the male-female ratio is about 4 to 1.
Locally, a group, including Gibson, meets regularly as the Grand Rapids/West Michigan Support Group of the National Stuttering Association. Over dinner recently at a local restaurant, they swapped theories, treatments and experiences.
"Thirty years ago, you couldn't have dragged me into a restaurant," because public places required him to speak, and speaking led to stuttering, says Gibson, 50.
Stuttering has no single cause and no single treatment. Speech therapy, psychotherapy, medication and mechanical devices have been helpful for some.
For Gibson, improvement came through a series of events. In college, he realized he had been in denial about his stuttering and wrote a letter to his family "admitting it." He also was encouraged by working with a speech therapist who stuttered. But a real shift occurred when he decided to start his own business.
"Finding what you love to do and going for it," he says, is important for building confidence..
Gibson had worked for a local piano store and had little public contact. The prospect of working for himself would mean going into people's homes, having one-on-one conversations, making and returning phone calls.
He prepared for the challenges.
"I started attending our local piano technician meetings," he says. "We'd chew the fat, talk shop and talk about some technical aspect of our work. I found people listened to me most of the time."
The support of his wife, Susan, a business technology teacher with the Kelloggsville School District, also has been "immeasurable," he says.
Tearing down the wall
Tasko is co-investigator for a study on the "nuts and bolts" of stuttering funded by the National Institutes of Health. The study, being conducted at Walter Reed Army Hospital, looks at breathing, speaking and articulation of those who stutter.
Other research is clarifying the genetic influence on stuttering.
One of the biggest frustrations, for those who stutter and the speech therapists who work with them, is seeing short-term improvements in the office setting which may not hold long-term.
Stuttering varies considerably from one person to the next. Many describe it as getting worse when they feel anxious, but a few say performance pressure actually improves their fluency. Most hate having people finish their sentences, but some find it helpful.
Early childhood stuttering may disappear on its own.
"About half will resolve by their teens," Tasko says.
There is no panacea, he says, but seeking help is important.
"We need to point people in different directions," he says.
Some find medication very helpful.
Cort Cameron, 50, of Grand Rapids, who works at Frames Unlimited in Kentwood, saw his stuttering improve after a physician prescribed Inderal, a drug typically used to treat various heart conditions, migraines and some tremors and tumors.
Kristen Thornton, 39, trauma registrar at Spectrum Health-Butterworth Campus, was prescribed Paxil for a bout with depression. After the depression lifted, she asked her physician if she could keep taking it because her stuttering had improved. He agreed.
Climbing over the wall
A life-changing event for Thornton, coordinator of the West Michigan support group, came when she lived in Austin, Texas, and joined her first support group.
"It was the first time I saw stuttering people in normal lives," she says. "They were professionals. They'd gone to college, owned houses, had children. It was important for me. You do feel like, 'I'm the only one. Why me?' That's when I came out of my shell."
What begins as a physiological or neurological condition tends to take on more significant emotional overtones as those who stutter withdraw or get locked out from communication with the world.
"I felt like a marked person," is how Thornton describes her early school days. "I'd overhear conversations about me, 'You know, the one over there. The one who stutters.' "
After years of withdrawal, self-consciousness and low self-esteem, many describe psychotherapy as critical in their eventual success. As they re-frame their thinking and self-image, some also see their stuttering improve.
Sue Zimmer, a medical secretary in the Wound Care department at St. Mary's Medical Center, speaks with style, grace and eloquence.
It wasn't always so.
Her first clear memory of being different came in kindergarten or first grade when she would leave her classroom for speech therapy.
For many years, "Every time I opened my mouth, I was anticipating a problem. You get conditioned."
After good academic performance in high school, the thought of college overwhelmed Zimmer. A friend who also stutters helped Zimmer land her first clerical job that required little interaction.
Zimmer's belief about how others perceived her influenced how she saw herself.
"I felt they thought I was slow," she says. "That I was different. I felt like a freak in a lot of ways. Frustrated."
In her early '20s, that frustration intensified. Combined with a sense of failure in several stuttering treatment programs, it led to an emotional breakdown. When she was hospitalized, a psychiatrist discovered she could speak more fluently into a tape recorder.
She would record her thoughts, and he would play them back during their sessions.
Zimmer hasn't had any speech therapy since. She calls it a "very slow-moving progress" in which she finally gained confidence.
"I learned somehow to stop focusing on how I'm talking and more on what I'm trying to communicate," Zimmer says.
She and her husband, Dan, who works in industrial maintenance, live in West Olive.
"I would never wish this on anyone," Zimmer says. On the other hand, she says, "It's given me a lot of insight into myself and other people. I'm very intuitive.
"(Now) I really enjoy talking to people. I love it. It's such a contradiction that sometimes I'm floored. I worked in radiation/oncology for a long time. Now I work in wound care. I can relate to people having problems."
Members of the Grand Rapids stuttering support group wish more people, especially young people, would seek support.
"You're a valuable person, and what you have to say is valuable," Cameron tells anyone who stutters.
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/features-0/108954149195260.xml
Sunday, July 11, 2004
By Tamara Lubic
The Grand Rapids Press
Most of us fear public speaking more than death, as studies have shown.
Those who struggle with stuttering feel that dread every day.
"It adversely affects all your relationships, but especially with the opposite sex," says Charles Gibson, who is self-employed as a registered piano technician. "Dating, being a teenager, going to college. It makes that period much more painful."
It can make those who stutter more susceptible to someone who offers a cure. A day before D.J. Dempsey, 20, of Grand Rapids, was to start culinary classes at Grand Rapids Community College, a stranger promised a cure when he also asked for Dempsey's help in unloading a truck.
Truck driver James D. Moore, of Osceola County, is scheduled to go on trial Monday, charged with raping and kidnapping Dempsey after allegedly drugging him with over-the-counter Benadryl pills.
After Dempsey's story became public, a group of compassionate friends and strangers raised funds for Dempsey to get a Fluency Master, a device invented about 20 years ago. It looks like a hearing aid and changes vocal feedback, with the goal of making stuttering speech more fluent.
Results were mixed for Dempsey, who is working as a dishwasher at San Chez restaurant in downtown Grand Rapids. He still is planning to pursue a degree in culinary arts at GRCC this fall.
About 3 million people in the United States stutter, according to the National Stuttering Association. It affects far more males. Stephen Tasko, an assistant professor of speech pathology and audiology at Western Michigan University, says the male-female ratio is about 4 to 1.
Locally, a group, including Gibson, meets regularly as the Grand Rapids/West Michigan Support Group of the National Stuttering Association. Over dinner recently at a local restaurant, they swapped theories, treatments and experiences.
"Thirty years ago, you couldn't have dragged me into a restaurant," because public places required him to speak, and speaking led to stuttering, says Gibson, 50.
Stuttering has no single cause and no single treatment. Speech therapy, psychotherapy, medication and mechanical devices have been helpful for some.
For Gibson, improvement came through a series of events. In college, he realized he had been in denial about his stuttering and wrote a letter to his family "admitting it." He also was encouraged by working with a speech therapist who stuttered. But a real shift occurred when he decided to start his own business.
"Finding what you love to do and going for it," he says, is important for building confidence..
Gibson had worked for a local piano store and had little public contact. The prospect of working for himself would mean going into people's homes, having one-on-one conversations, making and returning phone calls.
He prepared for the challenges.
"I started attending our local piano technician meetings," he says. "We'd chew the fat, talk shop and talk about some technical aspect of our work. I found people listened to me most of the time."
The support of his wife, Susan, a business technology teacher with the Kelloggsville School District, also has been "immeasurable," he says.
Tearing down the wall
Tasko is co-investigator for a study on the "nuts and bolts" of stuttering funded by the National Institutes of Health. The study, being conducted at Walter Reed Army Hospital, looks at breathing, speaking and articulation of those who stutter.
Other research is clarifying the genetic influence on stuttering.
One of the biggest frustrations, for those who stutter and the speech therapists who work with them, is seeing short-term improvements in the office setting which may not hold long-term.
Stuttering varies considerably from one person to the next. Many describe it as getting worse when they feel anxious, but a few say performance pressure actually improves their fluency. Most hate having people finish their sentences, but some find it helpful.
Early childhood stuttering may disappear on its own.
"About half will resolve by their teens," Tasko says.
There is no panacea, he says, but seeking help is important.
"We need to point people in different directions," he says.
Some find medication very helpful.
Cort Cameron, 50, of Grand Rapids, who works at Frames Unlimited in Kentwood, saw his stuttering improve after a physician prescribed Inderal, a drug typically used to treat various heart conditions, migraines and some tremors and tumors.
Kristen Thornton, 39, trauma registrar at Spectrum Health-Butterworth Campus, was prescribed Paxil for a bout with depression. After the depression lifted, she asked her physician if she could keep taking it because her stuttering had improved. He agreed.
Climbing over the wall
A life-changing event for Thornton, coordinator of the West Michigan support group, came when she lived in Austin, Texas, and joined her first support group.
"It was the first time I saw stuttering people in normal lives," she says. "They were professionals. They'd gone to college, owned houses, had children. It was important for me. You do feel like, 'I'm the only one. Why me?' That's when I came out of my shell."
What begins as a physiological or neurological condition tends to take on more significant emotional overtones as those who stutter withdraw or get locked out from communication with the world.
"I felt like a marked person," is how Thornton describes her early school days. "I'd overhear conversations about me, 'You know, the one over there. The one who stutters.' "
After years of withdrawal, self-consciousness and low self-esteem, many describe psychotherapy as critical in their eventual success. As they re-frame their thinking and self-image, some also see their stuttering improve.
Sue Zimmer, a medical secretary in the Wound Care department at St. Mary's Medical Center, speaks with style, grace and eloquence.
It wasn't always so.
Her first clear memory of being different came in kindergarten or first grade when she would leave her classroom for speech therapy.
For many years, "Every time I opened my mouth, I was anticipating a problem. You get conditioned."
After good academic performance in high school, the thought of college overwhelmed Zimmer. A friend who also stutters helped Zimmer land her first clerical job that required little interaction.
Zimmer's belief about how others perceived her influenced how she saw herself.
"I felt they thought I was slow," she says. "That I was different. I felt like a freak in a lot of ways. Frustrated."
In her early '20s, that frustration intensified. Combined with a sense of failure in several stuttering treatment programs, it led to an emotional breakdown. When she was hospitalized, a psychiatrist discovered she could speak more fluently into a tape recorder.
She would record her thoughts, and he would play them back during their sessions.
Zimmer hasn't had any speech therapy since. She calls it a "very slow-moving progress" in which she finally gained confidence.
"I learned somehow to stop focusing on how I'm talking and more on what I'm trying to communicate," Zimmer says.
She and her husband, Dan, who works in industrial maintenance, live in West Olive.
"I would never wish this on anyone," Zimmer says. On the other hand, she says, "It's given me a lot of insight into myself and other people. I'm very intuitive.
"(Now) I really enjoy talking to people. I love it. It's such a contradiction that sometimes I'm floored. I worked in radiation/oncology for a long time. Now I work in wound care. I can relate to people having problems."
Members of the Grand Rapids stuttering support group wish more people, especially young people, would seek support.
"You're a valuable person, and what you have to say is valuable," Cameron tells anyone who stutters.
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/features-0/108954149195260.xml