Talking Slowly and Deliberately

An excerpt from the book Self-Therapy for the Stutterer

The first rule calls for you to build a habit of talking slowly and deliberately, whether or not you stutter. This is recommended for a couple of reasons. First, it induces a manner of talking which is generally respected and admired, and secondly, it will result in a more varied, relaxed manner of speaking which is more responsive to therapy controlled procedures.

Temporarily accepting your role as a stutterer, resolve to make a special effort to talk slowly and deliberately all the time.¹ This will not be easy to do if you normally speak fairly rapidly. It may take considerable effort to talk slowly whenever you speak.

It will help if you can spend at least five to ten minutes a day practicing when you are alone. You might read to yourself at a gradual slow rate in line with what you should use in conversation with others. Then possibly think of some subject about which you are informed and talk to yourself slowly and deliberately.

When you are with others, always try to resist feelings of time pressure. At the moment you are expected to speak, you may sometimes have an almost panicky feeling of haste and urgency.^2,3 You think that you are under “time pressure” with no time to lose, and you have a compulsive feeling that you must speak quickly without taking the time for deliberate and relaxed expression. Do your best to resist this time pressure feeling.^4,5

Stutterers are also apt to fear silence when they are embarrassed. Accordingly, it is suggested that when talking, you should experiment with occasionally pausing. When speaking a sentence, pause momentarily (very briefly) between words and between phrases. There is no hurry—probably you are not taking as much time as you think—take your time. Unless there is a fire, people will wait to hear what you have to say. Let them wait and don’t hurry saying “hello” on the phone. Pause! Take your time.

If you have a tape recorder available, this is an opportune time to make a recording of the way you talk, particularly if you have not yet started speaking according to the recommendations of this first rule.

Making a recording of the way you usually stutter will supply important information to be used in this program.⁶ For example, listening to such a recording should help you discover what, if anything, needs to be done to qualify you as speaking slowly and deliberately.

The question arises as to what may be the best way to get a recording of your stuttering. If you have trouble talking on the phone, you might place a microphone near when you make several phone calls—at least five or possibly ten minutes of recording time is desirable.

Then later, take the time to listen to the recordings. Did you talk slowly and deliberately and thus set an example of the rate at which you should speak? Later you will use these recordings to study your speech.

Of course if possible, it would be even more advantageous in studying your speech if you could have videotapes made of the way you talk. This enables you to both see and hear yourself at the same time.

1 Try stuttering slowly. Keep stuttering, but do it in slow motion. (Guitar)

2 I have always felt a great pressure to give a reply within a split second and with just the right and exact words. Other stutterers feel this, too. Isn’t it silly? (Garland)

3 Stutterers generally stutter too fast and get into tremors because they do. (Van Riper)

4 Panic, tension, and an overwhelming urgency are the hallmarks of stuttering; they are what you must overcome. Totally resist any feelings of hurry and pressure. Let ’em wait. (J. D. Williams)

5 A basic feature of stuttering behavior is that the stutterer is under time pressure to a great extent. The stutterer has to learn how to permit pauses in his speech, to risk the fear of silence, to give himself time to catch his breath to resist the time pressure. (Sheehan)

6 A tape recorder will prove a good investment for the stutterer. (Bluemel)

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Winston Churchill

Seeking to "remove Winston Churchill's stutter by second guessing the diagnosis" indicates neither a truthful retelling of history nor an informed opinion about a complex speech disorder, say experts in the field of speech-language pathology.

Recent news reports that quote Dr. John Mather, a Washington physician, as saying that Churchill's stutter "is a lie" brought adamant critical response from specialists in the field of stuttering and fluency disorders.

Frank Wolf

This Virginian congressman has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1981. The longtime supporter of the Stuttering Foundation drew national attention to childhood stuttering in 2006 when he submitted an article about Tiger Woods from the SFA newsletter to the Congressional Record. The congressman is featured in the Stuttering Foundation's Famous People Who Stutter brochure.

Bill Walton

From BillWalton.com

Thank you for your interest in my life long problem with my speech and communication skills. I was a very shy and reserved young man who could not speak at all without severely stuttering until I was 28 years old. Always a success in the classroom and on the basketball court, I took refuge in the things that I did well as a youngster. A straight A student, my athletic abilities covered the deficiencies that limited my overall growth and development. The game of basketball was my religion, the gym my church. It was a convenient way of avoiding my responsibilities of developing my human relation skills.

When I was 28, a chance encounter at a social event with Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Glickman completely changed my life in so many ways that things have never been the same since, nor have they ever been better. That day, in a very brief, private conversation (one way, mind you, since I literally could not speak at the time) Marty explained, patiently and concisely, that talking, communicating was a skill not a gift or a birthright and that like any skill, whether it be sports, music, business or whatever, needed to be developed over a lifetime of hard work, discipline, organization and practice. Marty gave me some simple tips that day and then encouraged me to take those keys and apply them to methods of learning that I had received from the special teachers that I had come across in my life, particularly the 6 Hall of Fame basketball coaches that I had played for throughout my career. The beginning of my whole new life was as simple as that. No gimmicks, tricks or shortcuts. Just the realization that with some help, guidance and a lot of hard work that I too could do what seemed so easy, simple and natural to everyone else, yet seemed impossibly out of my reach and comprehension.

Bill Withers

While Bill Withers has long been on the Stuttering Foundation's list of Famous People Who Stutter, many people probably didn’t realize he stuttered. He passed away on March 30, 2020.

Born in 1938 in Slab Fork, W.V., Withers was the youngest of six children. When his father died when Withers was small, he was raised by his mother and grandmother, both of whom worked as domestics.

Darren Sproles

Darren Sproles, a former player for The Philadelphia Eagles, the New Orleans Saints and the San Diego Chargers, made history in 2007 when he became the first player in NFL history to return a kickoff and a punt for his first two NFL touchdowns in the same game. In 2021, he was selected to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.