We join those speech-language pathologists who believe that stuttering results from an inherited predisposition or susceptibility to stutter. But we also believe, as do the majority of our colleagues, that the most disabling aspect of stuttering results from our attempts not to stutter.

When we forcibly try to move off and away from the stuttering block, we make it worse. These often futile attempts not to stutter become automatic learned patterns that become strongly conditioned over time. They create stumbling blocks along the road to recovery for many people who stutter.

It is what we do in our attempts not to stutter (i.e., to avoid, conceal, and/or release ourselves from stuttering) that often results in an increase in severity and feelings of helplessness.

Why do so many people who stutter attempt to remediate stuttering using such destructive self-reinforcing strategies? For most of us, feeling different from others is uncomfortable. We react to the perplexed looks, reactions, and the imagined or real scorn of others with feelings of frustration, embarrassment, and shame.

A natural physical response to such emotional discomfort is muscular tension, which is a correlate of stress that often makes stuttering worse. When we feel stuck and at the same time embarrassed, we often react with increased muscular effort in our desire to escape the moment of stuttering and move on. It is these reactions, that we learn over time, that create more struggle and tension which often results in more stuttering.

These are the behaviors we can learn to change if we are willing to identify what they are, how we use them in our attempts to escape or avoid stuttering, and how they interfere with the talking process. These are the behaviors we want to encourage you to change. In doing so, you will become more fluent because you will have learned to confront your stuttering without as much fear and trepidation, and thus with less of the confounding muscular effort that often fuels your blocks.

The lesson here is this: The less we try to hide and conceal our stuttering, the more we can learn to stutter with less effort. When this happens, we can become much more in control of our stuttering. In turn we can become more fluent.

For more information, see the article, Never Give Up: Self Initiated Recovery.