Mastering Blocking & Stuttering: A Cognitive Approach to Achieving Fluency
"If you can speak fluently in just one context, you can learn to speak fluently in all contexts."
- A Testimony by Walter Sturdivant Client of Tim Mackesey.
Walter Sturdivant
At around the age of four or five my mother told me to speak “low and slow.” I wasn’t at all sure why I should do this and simply ignored the request. It wasn’t until I was in the second grade that my normal routine of walking home from school with a friend was interrupted twice a week …
Tim Mackesey, SLP
To move from an unresourceful state to a resourceful state instantly. To “break state.”
If you are experiencing anticipatory anxiety before speaking, swish away the feeling quickly. If you have negative feelings after a stutter, prevent a new somatic memory on your time-line. The swish pattern is a powerful tool- when combined with reframing and the Drop-Down Through pattern- to help become “relapse-proof.”
Where there …
Tim Mackesey, SLP
Eye aversion, or intentional breaking of eye contact during moments of stuttering, is more than meets the eye. It is far more than just a behavior. To fully understand eye aversion it is important to examine it from several angles. These include: 1) defining appropriate eye contact, 2) the positive intention behind eye aversion, 3) the cognitive and emotional aspects of eye aversion, 4) the listener’s …
Tim Mackesey, SLP
Background:
The makers of the SpeechEasy (SE) have enjoyed a recent splash of free publicity by appearing on Good Morning America, Oprah, and write-ups in some magazines. The SE’s most immediate predecessor, the FluencyMaster (FM), has been on the market since 1989. Good Morning America, featuring the SE, had the subtitle “An End to Stuttering.” Oprah had a subtitle across the screen stating “Stuttering Stopped by the …
Tim Mackesey, SLP
Boca
It’s the second week of my sophomore year in a college accounting class in Boca Raton, Florida, and I’m about to relive my worst nightmare. My professor has just announced that we will go down the rows of seats one after another taking turns reading the homework questions and giving our answer. I was in total panic. All my past memories of and embarrassment for reading …
by Tim Mackesey, CCC-SLP
Purpose
The intention of the State Management Graph below is to help people using Neuro-Semantics to habituate the use of strategies. Daily use of strategies will provide for more consistent resourcefulness and improved fluency. To make sense out of the acronyms and terminology in the graph, a background in Neuro-Semantics is required. Many of these strategies are available for free as downloads from www.neurosemantics.com. Others …
Read about Tim’s utilizing metaphors from Harry Potter in working with a 13 year old PWS.
By Tim Mackesey PC, CCC-SLP
How is it that people who stutter develop body movements, look away during stutters, change words, avoid talking, and other maladaptive behaviors? What motivates them to make these choices? These begin as attempted solutions but become habitual and develop into real problems and secondary symptoms. How can we help them eliminate these behaviors?
Hank, a 4 ½ year-old boy, entered my lobby making a loud …
