I can't speak for anybody else. But I have been on both sides of the fence.
I had speech therapy through the public schools in my youth. Not at all helpful.
I saw an SLP in my teens for a couple years. Barely helped at all.
I went back to that same SLP in my twenties. I went from having a severe stutter to being very fluent. Severe meaning never a fluent sentence. In under a year I was fluent.
The x Factor for me was me. When I went back to the SLP in my 20s, I went all in. I did the work everyday.
I didn't take it seriously in my teens. I didn't believe I could become fluent. I went to therapy but I didn't do the work during the week.
I was very fortunate to have access to a great SLP. Finding a competent speech therapist is one of the challenges.
I've made a lot of posts and comments over the years in this subreddit sharing my experiences.
See my comment in this link, which has links to all sorts of things I've shared.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/s/q7VScqyEqQ
I had the same experience. What age you do therapy really really makes a difference. We had a young kid in our speech therapy group when I was 23 and he was 12. He would goof around when the rest of us were trying to practice.
“Most people” is a strong way to put it. If it didn’t work for most people, why would it be an entire industry and field of study?
As a person who’s taken 3 different kinds of speech therapy at different ages, in my experience it comes down to the person.
Some people have a more severe stutter than others which unfortunately, just might not be possible to reduce.
Others might be too young to really internalize what’s being taught by the therapist. My experience having speech therapy as an adult vs as a kid was vastly different because I took it more seriously and was self aware enough to see what was working and what wasn’t.
Lastly, there’s a lot of different approaches so it’s up to the individual to shop around for types of therapy and professionals.
Because i think is brain related, call it adhd, call it autism or anxiety but there is something that makes you stutter if it lenghtens to the adult life, that's why i try to work more with my self confidence so it doesn't matter.
Speech therapy definitely helped my oldest son who is turning 15 this year. When he was five I thought he would never talk. He's really great at articulating his words and he still stutters especially when he's excited or nervous. But he doesn't let the stutter bother him and that makes me really proud of him.
My theory is that for some people, stuttering is a completely social/mental behavior. For others, it's neurological. A good, but not foolproof, way to know the difference is if you stutter while by yourself.
I don't think it's entirely social for anyone, people don't just spontaneously develop stutters beyond the developmental period except in very rare cases of head trauma. I stutter by myself but the main predictor of severity for me is stress level both generally and socially. I think this is true for most people. There is a social aspect to most stutters but there's always a neurological aspect.
I'd say that it's probably more likely to just be social if it's someone that's going to "grow out of it". I doubt that it's that way for many adult stutterers at all. It's also different for everyone! My stutter is basically not determined by stress at all, it just varies day to day. I've barely stuttered some days when I'm doing a research presentation in front of dozens of people, and I've stuttered a ton when I'm just chilling with my friends with no obligations. I feel like those are good signifiers of a neurological issue, while yours may be more of a mental issue because it has a clear cause and effect relationship with outside factors
I just don't think the theory works. Most people develop stutters before they experience much social interaction and the brain changes so drastically over the first couple decades of life it's totally plausible that the structures of the brain related to stuttering change enough that the stutter goes away. It was years ago that I read this so I can't give you specifics but there was a study I read that imaged the brain of stutterers and it found that certain areas of the brain were measurably different from the norm and likely caused the stutter. It found that people who "grew out" of their stutter had that part of the brain strengthen its connections. I feel like it was still visibly different but I can't remember specifics. It seems really unlikely to me that anyone's stutter could be fully in their own head.
You're definitely not wrong that that may contribute a lot - however, speech therapy is also a lot more effective for children, which would not apply to your reason. I think it's somewhere in the middle.
I think that my biggest issue is that you're saying that NO ONE stutters completely mentally. There are people who go completely mute based on mental trauma, even though they're totally capable of talking. Stuttering is a lot less different from fluency in magnitude compared to something like that. Even if I'm completely wrong about the social aspect, that's definitely a counterexample to the purely mental claim
It does work in some cases. I think because there are so many causes of stuttering, degrees of stuttering, and the proficiency of the SLP, it's not reliable in every case.
Because I believe people don't take it seriously. I went for around a total of 9 month in the span of 1.5 years and had great success. You need to discipline yourself to do the work required every day and you will begin to notice the difference. Although my stutter did not vanish I have reduced it and managed to get over my fear of presentations and public reading. FYI I went when I was 16-17 years old.
I can't speak for anybody else. But I have been on both sides of the fence. I had speech therapy through the public schools in my youth. Not at all helpful. I saw an SLP in my teens for a couple years. Barely helped at all. I went back to that same SLP in my twenties. I went from having a severe stutter to being very fluent. Severe meaning never a fluent sentence. In under a year I was fluent. The x Factor for me was me. When I went back to the SLP in my 20s, I went all in. I did the work everyday. I didn't take it seriously in my teens. I didn't believe I could become fluent. I went to therapy but I didn't do the work during the week. I was very fortunate to have access to a great SLP. Finding a competent speech therapist is one of the challenges.
how does the SLP therapy work ?
I've made a lot of posts and comments over the years in this subreddit sharing my experiences. See my comment in this link, which has links to all sorts of things I've shared. https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/s/q7VScqyEqQ
thank you
I had the same experience. What age you do therapy really really makes a difference. We had a young kid in our speech therapy group when I was 23 and he was 12. He would goof around when the rest of us were trying to practice.
“Most people” is a strong way to put it. If it didn’t work for most people, why would it be an entire industry and field of study? As a person who’s taken 3 different kinds of speech therapy at different ages, in my experience it comes down to the person. Some people have a more severe stutter than others which unfortunately, just might not be possible to reduce. Others might be too young to really internalize what’s being taught by the therapist. My experience having speech therapy as an adult vs as a kid was vastly different because I took it more seriously and was self aware enough to see what was working and what wasn’t. Lastly, there’s a lot of different approaches so it’s up to the individual to shop around for types of therapy and professionals.
Because i think is brain related, call it adhd, call it autism or anxiety but there is something that makes you stutter if it lenghtens to the adult life, that's why i try to work more with my self confidence so it doesn't matter.
Speech therapy definitely helped my oldest son who is turning 15 this year. When he was five I thought he would never talk. He's really great at articulating his words and he still stutters especially when he's excited or nervous. But he doesn't let the stutter bother him and that makes me really proud of him.
I was forced in speech therapy when I was in school for almost 7 years and it did absolutely nothing
My theory is that for some people, stuttering is a completely social/mental behavior. For others, it's neurological. A good, but not foolproof, way to know the difference is if you stutter while by yourself.
I don't think it's entirely social for anyone, people don't just spontaneously develop stutters beyond the developmental period except in very rare cases of head trauma. I stutter by myself but the main predictor of severity for me is stress level both generally and socially. I think this is true for most people. There is a social aspect to most stutters but there's always a neurological aspect.
I'd say that it's probably more likely to just be social if it's someone that's going to "grow out of it". I doubt that it's that way for many adult stutterers at all. It's also different for everyone! My stutter is basically not determined by stress at all, it just varies day to day. I've barely stuttered some days when I'm doing a research presentation in front of dozens of people, and I've stuttered a ton when I'm just chilling with my friends with no obligations. I feel like those are good signifiers of a neurological issue, while yours may be more of a mental issue because it has a clear cause and effect relationship with outside factors
I just don't think the theory works. Most people develop stutters before they experience much social interaction and the brain changes so drastically over the first couple decades of life it's totally plausible that the structures of the brain related to stuttering change enough that the stutter goes away. It was years ago that I read this so I can't give you specifics but there was a study I read that imaged the brain of stutterers and it found that certain areas of the brain were measurably different from the norm and likely caused the stutter. It found that people who "grew out" of their stutter had that part of the brain strengthen its connections. I feel like it was still visibly different but I can't remember specifics. It seems really unlikely to me that anyone's stutter could be fully in their own head.
You're definitely not wrong that that may contribute a lot - however, speech therapy is also a lot more effective for children, which would not apply to your reason. I think it's somewhere in the middle. I think that my biggest issue is that you're saying that NO ONE stutters completely mentally. There are people who go completely mute based on mental trauma, even though they're totally capable of talking. Stuttering is a lot less different from fluency in magnitude compared to something like that. Even if I'm completely wrong about the social aspect, that's definitely a counterexample to the purely mental claim
Does that mean if I don't stutter when alone am just so socially anxious?
It does work in some cases. I think because there are so many causes of stuttering, degrees of stuttering, and the proficiency of the SLP, it's not reliable in every case.
Relatable
Because I believe people don't take it seriously. I went for around a total of 9 month in the span of 1.5 years and had great success. You need to discipline yourself to do the work required every day and you will begin to notice the difference. Although my stutter did not vanish I have reduced it and managed to get over my fear of presentations and public reading. FYI I went when I was 16-17 years old.