Mindenki látja

Look at Gareth Gates. The more famous he became, the more severe his stutter turned to. – Why? Because it's not success we want. With his success, the abyss between his phobia-led personality and his popular image became wider and wider. Finally he had to stop singing to work on his speak. Now he started over singing again, and here comes the videos of his terrible speak. (I know I shouldn't generalize, but I claim that this is how these things are.) – It's not success we want; we take to success, instead of something else we barely even know what it is.

From a bright man once I got an advice that I haven't been able to use since then: "Stutter on purpose."

Seems easy. But when I try it, I laugh, and I can't stutter. I can just mimic it, but it's not stuttering.

Ironic. If there's a God out there watching humanity, surely stutterers are his amusement.

But in the end, Asif doesn't have the clue. "Want to get rid of your fear of stuttering? Get rid of your fear of dying!" The key moment in Asif's journey was not changing the breathing, despising modern society, thinking and living calmly (these were just the effects) – but that a hurricane off-centered him from his phobia-led life: a bigger, stronger trauma washed away the past post-traumatic stress, and with having to face with dying, all the past desires and lies, his scenical castle in the air was ridiculed, faded, fell apart. Being a castaway it would have been a very comic thing continuing wanting to be normal, wanting to gain fluency. Thus he looked back and asked silently: "Was I a fool? Now I'm in solitude beyond expression, looking into the face of death: and I had feared all my life a silly, harmless black cat not to run afor my car. Hahah!" – But of course he didn't talk to himself, because healthy people don't talk to themselves.

My hurricane was that I managed to unchain the paradoxes of stuttering thus opening up my well-kept heart to the stroke of lightning that others call "the truth". – Because happiness can also be traumatic.

Today I chanced upon a picture-book from my childhood: SPIDERS. I shivered with horror. I couldn't even look at it.

But now I recall the memories watching those big pictures joyfully: I even admired a bit those crafty creatures; I wanted to create a band named "Spiders"; I was weaving fantasies, slowly, craftfully, calmly, in peace, like a harmless spider.

Psychologists say that a mere idea can be traumatic. Even more fantasies: think of bad dreams, or the LSD caused "bad trips". I think that the shock that triggered my ever lasting fear and trembling is the fact that I learned from that book about the Black Widow: that the female kills and eats the male after making love. It's not an accident that we stutterers have intense, impulsive imagination – thus we tend to overreact things with our rightist brain, instead of analyzing and understanding with the leftist. Or perhaps it's the opposite: instead of living through traumatic events, we block our emotions, thus we tend to overreact, overanalyse, overworry the similar situations. In one way or another: that could cause anxiety-related problems such as phobias. Like phobia of losing control in speaking situations.

So I have to understand, that it's not the spider I'm afraid of, but being unmercifully unnihiliated, the experience of squirming unavailingly, to being paralysed at the end of my suffer. Nobody helps; how cruel and unpredictable might be the others in the world, if my closest one turns on me: I know now that in the sunshine there are spider webs silently awaiting for the weak, and if I'm not strong enough, then I can only be a victim.

I'm not afraid of the spider. I'm afraid of myself – not being able to live my God-given life like I should.

I'm smiling at the suspicous Others in the morning, after I had flogging myself histerically when alone, to be able to wash off the nightmares. After I've done the indispensable for living, I'm all by myself again. I drink? I hope? I vent? Doesn't matter. The spiders are out there and I have no choice, I must cope with the daily nightmare. 

I wish that God told me in my dreams that I am the one who weaves the web of horror round myself. That the one inside is the craftiest spider of all.

But if there's no God, I'm a fool to wait for it. Or maybe it comes only if I don't wish it. 

Or maybe both.

For my part, I've found this thread the most interesting, most insightful of all in the entire forum. (And "Dysfluency 1." the funniest.) I don't care about Asif's personality, if he has experienced extraordinary things. 

To show my respect to Asif I copy his summary from his blog.

—

ASIF/THE CROW: HOW I ENDED MY STUTTER

People ask me often how I did it. How did I stop stuttering and start speaking.
Well…

I may not be typical, but then again I might just be.
I have a theory, that stutterers are "Golden Children".
We come into the world and are – from the start – different to most people.
We detect, early on, that the world is crazy.
We can make no sense of it.
We see adults as completely nuts. And other children as spiteful creatures that would do us harm.
We do not understand it at all, because we are not like that.

But what we are, as a group, is more sensitive, more vulnerable, than others.
Stress sets in. It builds up. We want to talk about this, but nobody understands. Nobody listens.
The need to communicate builds and builds, and we use more and more effort to try to be heard.
And to be understood.
And at some point the effort we put into trying to vocalize our needs causes our vocal cords to close.
Like a tin whistle will not whistle when blown too hard, our vocal cords are blown too hard and they stop vocalizing.

I may be wrong. Or at least only right about myself.
But consider the possibility that this may have happened to you.
You have learned, over a lifetime, that you stutter.
How in the world are you going to unlearn that?

How I did it is probably not possible for most people, but for those who are serious enough about speaking fluently, it may work for you.

You must discover yourself all over again.
Put yourself in an environment where you can do this. A seething city will not do.
Silence and solitude are necessary. A desert is ideal. Or a sunny, empty beach.
Teach yourself to meditate. This is easy. Do it alone. There is no such thing as meditating in a group, at least not for me. You must be alone.
Empty your mind and breathe.
Really breathe.
Become conscious of every breath. Do not force anything.
Sink into nothingness.

I recommend reading what must be one of the world's shortest books:
Tao Te Ching: the Stephen Mitchell translation.
Absorb it. Read it over and over. Live it. Become it.
And realize that effort used is effort wasted.
Give your vocal cords, and your entire mind and body a break.

Just stop.

After a week – or a month – of this, you will be very different from when you started.
And you will be able to speak.
It may not last, but you will know it can be done, and how it can be done, and you will be able to build on that.
A time will come when you simply forget about your desire to speak fluently, and that will be the moment that you can.

We want it too much. and that is the very thing that prevents us from getting it.
Until you understand that last sentence, you will not be fluent.

No guarantees on this: but understand: what you get out of it is directly proportional to what you put into it. Put everything you have into it, but do it without effort, or the desire for any result.

Just do it.

This theory also talks about "muscles" instead of me. No, I'm not 'soul + brain + muscles +…'. If I die, and scientists chop me up, then there will be muscles, brain, bones and my angry soul over their heads; but now I am what I am, and nobody can (it's scientifically impossible) theorize me. – The tension of the muscles are pertain to wanting to speak well, it's not the cause. So neither the tension triggers stuttering, but our wanting to speak well. Arachnofobia isn't cured when basic tension is resolved. Of course with an already traumatized body it is easier to develop a phobia; and easier to overcome it as well, if you're relieved. But in one way or another you have to face the spider, at least to see that it's not even there. 

So the theory is wrong in its core, but in the surface it works well, and there is a very good practical advice: to slow down and think. Working on your speech is redundant if you can mentally massage out your traumas. We can't relax, unless we concede that we needn't want what we want. But a wanting can't unwant itself. So we have to really really slow down and think, think, think until we face with the paradoxity of our wanting; bluntly: that we are complete nuts.

What is in the mouse-trap that forces us to ride for a fall? A very special type of cheese? Or is it cheap but given to us ever since we eat, hence of what we think we couldn't live without? Our mouth dries, our limbs shake, our heart jump if we are divested of it. And because of our shaky limbs we lose control on our move: and the trap clacks.