Good day everyone!
I have already made a video about stuttering, which you can watch here (screenshot shown). In this video I want to add some new thoughts to try to help people understand better the essence of Roman Snezhko's discovery.
In my own words, based on my personal understandings of life, stuttering is just a stupor that occurs when a person tries to perform a logically impossible action with his vocal apparatus. Namely, he is either trying to say one thought, while he is thinking about something else, or the person has not yet really built a thought in his head, but he is already trying to express it.
Here is an example. Try it out for yourself if you like.
Can you calmly imagine and talk about how a pig digs acorns under an oak tree, greedily devouring them and making snorting sounds, and at the same time build in your imagination a story about a chicken that cackles furiously, running away from a child running after it with a water gun?
And you know what? When I went to test the first shortened version of this story, I was able to say, "The pig is digging acorns," while in my mind I was imagining a clucking chicken.
There may be several reasons for this, but one of them, I think, lies in the fact that such a short text does not force a person to use fantasy. He just says sounds, words from memory - which means that these words may not carry any meaning in themselves. You can memorize a sentence from a movie in a language you don't know and say it without understanding the meaning of the words. And at the same time, you can think of something else. Therefore, it is important here to just take an example and invent and tell a story about it yourself, while trying to think about something else.
Realizing this, I tried to go further in my example and continued to fantasize about our pig while trying to think about the clucking chicken. Result? I immediately stumbled! That which was to be proved! I didn't stutter because I perfectly understood the cause of the stupor, and I didn’t try to talk about that which wasn’t present in my head. In the moment of my speech stupor, I was thinking of the chicken, which made it impossible to be speaking about the pig’s story. (Animate focus on chicken and pig). In order to talk about the pig again, I would have to bring back thoughts about it.
I stopped talking when I was imagining the chicken. I didn't talk because I understood that I had no data in my head to continue talking about the pig. [1] If I had continued, I would have started to stutter.
It turns out that such sudden stops during a conversation, are normal! They simply tell us that we don't have data in our minds - thoughts - to speak out, and if we continue the conversation, we will stutter.
This brings us to the topic of the so-called "Difficult Words" which I have also experienced in my life. What are they? For those who don’t know, when during a conversation a person is approaching such words, a strong thought appears in his mind that he will not be able to say that word without stuttering.
So, thinking about the nature of the difficult words, I came to the conclusion that this is just the feedback of our body with us, making us aware that we are doing something wrong. For example, we think about something else - which may be a memory that this word is supposedly difficult, or thoughts and fears that we will now begin to stutter. Thus, the focus of attention has changed from the object of the conversation to something that is not part of the conversation. And this is the cause of stuttering - or a stupor of speech. (photo Mark - Attention)
Important - Thinking about how to speak, or thinking about how to be focused on the topic of conversation, is also a retreat into your thoughts that will have an impact on you - which can be reflected in speech and body language.
Before I go any further, I want to give you one interesting example that illustrates well the essence of stuttering.
In this video, John Moschitta - the fastest speaking person in the world - at about 1 minute and 38 seconds says how he quickly reads the text from the teleprompter, and sometimes he mispronounces the word. He speaks so fast that no one hears the error and no one stops him. His own brain hears the error though, but he continues to read the text further as no one stops him. But after about six words, his brain goes, "Wow, you can't get away with it!" and then John suddenly starts talking incoherent rubbish - he stupors.
All due to the fact that while reading the text, he was thinking about what happened in the past, instead of being in the present. This is exactly the cause of stuttering, and one of the many proofs that stuttering is not a disease, but a consequence of not quite correct thinking during a conversation.
How to learn to speak correctly?
For starters, you could talk out loud alone just to see what mental state you're in when you're speaking perfectly; pay attention to what your mind is focused on while pronouncing the words.
Try to deliberately create problems for yourself - as I did in the chicken and pig example - this will also help you see the causes of stuttering.
Try to use your difficult words - or words you've been unable to say recently - in the sentences you're building. See that when you’re alone and your attention is not distracted by anyone or anything else, you can calmly say those words.
All this should prove to you that there is no such disease as "stuttering". This should show you what is the simple cause of speech stupors.
Speak out loud to yourself until you fully understand the causes of stuttering - then you can start talking to people. It may well be that from time to time during a conversation you will focus your attention on your fears, or on the opinions of others, etc. If this happens, you should learn to recognize your mistakes and discipline yourself, accustom yourself to staying focused on the present and on the topic of conversation in any situation.
(* Remember - you are in complete control of your attention. This is your tool that focuses on what you yourself focus it on)
I already said in the first video that meditation and concentration can help a lot with focus of attention. I recommend to try.
(* Meditation - Your attention is not focused on anything in particular. You experience the state of "I Am".
Concentration - you focus your attention on something: breathing, ambient sounds, etc.).
So, stuttering is not a disease, but a stupor of speech that occurs when a person tries to talk about something that he has no data in his head about.
Data may be Missyng for several reasons:
the person's attention has switched to another thought, but at the same time he is still trying to express the old one, which no longer exists in his head;
either a person initially did not build a thought properly, or did not build a thought at all, but still tries to talk.
The latter can often be observed when a speaking person briefly stops to think almost after every second word, or changes what he has already said before when new thoughts appear in his mind.
(* For those familiar with programming: can you show information stored in a variable that has not yet been initialized (i.e. it does not contain data in computer memory)? The question itself does not make sense. And this is one of the causes of stuttering when people do not see the obvious and try to do the impossible).
If a person's thoughts are in the right order, then he cannot physically stutter.
Please share your speech experience in the comments.
And thanks for watching!
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