Transfer-Wk 23,Thurs-Best Practices for Fluent Speech

A few days ago I was speaking to a friend. Half way through our conversation he interrupted it to ask why I wasn’t speaking as I had a few days earlier, when I called him right after my speech exercises.

Essentially, he was asking; Why was I choosing to stutter?

That wasn’t exactly how he phrased it, but there was no doubt that was what he meant. Basically, I had forgot to use my targets and my stutter wasn’t bad enough for me to think about it yet.

I told him that the most difficult about my speech therapy, is that I don’t really need it once I finish the course. I will need it eventually, but actually choosing to use it when you were spontaneously fluent was very difficult.

I went on to provide an analogy; let’s say you had difficulty walking, and would trip over your feet randomly within every 50 steps. This would be highly irritating, so you take therapy. The therapy teaches you a special way of walking, with you concentrating on every step you take, including every bent joint and every muscle contraction from your abdominal muscles to your toe nails. The therapy works amazingly well, but the amazing this is; you can walk thousands of steps now without thinking about every step and still don’t trip.

You’re cured!!

Well, not exactly; your cure will be as fleeting as the enthusiasm gained at a motivational seminar. If you don’t realize this (as I didn’t in 1993 even though I was told), you go skipping down the street enjoying your life like never before, everything is great for a month. If you do realize it, you practice constantly and attempt to monitor your voice all the time (which I do now), but it’s still very difficult to do.

That was the analogy provided by me to my friend.

He quickly chalked up my analogy as a load of B.S., and went on to say : ‘I thought it was like the way a black belt would practice Karate. Even though he knows it, he practices every day.’

This caused a slight paradigm shift for me.

Practice as defined in the dictionary is “systematic exercise for proficiency”. So basically, my shaping every day is my practice. I practice to maintain and perfect my skills.

But what my friend was saying was, I should be practicing fluency as a doctor practices medicine, or a lawyer practices law. It’s a constant application of the recommended process.

Essentially, the 8 targets taught in the Precision Fluency Shaping Program, is a collection of Best Practices for Fluent Speech.

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Not meant as advice, please find a qualified therapist if you are interested in similar therapy.