Stutter With Confidence #38 with Dr Rupert Johnson
Hiding No More
I had a ton of fun discussing stuttering with Rupert, who is a speech language pathologist, professor, and a person who stutters. We talked about the shrinking education and experience for speech language pathologists in training when it comes to stuttering; the idea that much more counseling/coaching is involved with helping folks who stutter than most of the other speech conditions that an SLP works with; the myriad of different approaches that exist for trying to help folks who stutter; the similarities in terms of avoidance behaviors between many folks with hearing loss and those who stutter; the fluency craze delirium that took over the SLP world in the 1960’s and ‘70s and how this harmed many people who stutter; the idea that most of the suffering of stuttering comes from the feelings of social isolation, not the stuttering itself; becoming desensitized to other people’s reactions when we stutter by habitually practicing non-avoidance and eye contact; Mike and Rupert’s avoidance patterns and efforts to hide their stutter in high school; the fact that wanting not to stutter in any given situation increases the likelihood that we will stutter; the importance of SLPs using some voluntary stuttering themselves in the real world so that they have at least partially experienced the challenge of what they are asking their clients to do; and much more.
Enjoy.
0 Comments