Stuttering: Acceptance while working on improving

Blog background

I have been deeply involved in sharing my understanding with fellow stutterers, speech and language pathologists and researchers, especially in the 90's. The older part of this blog reports some the discussions I was having on a professional list at that time. Most of the discussions are still relevant today.

I remained involved in the stuttering community, mostly as participant in activities of the National Stuttering Association (NSA), and occasional workshop leader. Since my retirement I have returned to writing, and I just developed an audio course on fluency improvement. A link for the course can be found in this blog, as well as posts based on more recent discussions I am having in a Stuttering Facebook group.

Wednesday, October 09, 1996

Acceptance while working on improving

To Vera Chaplin who wondered how "acceptance" and "working on overcoming stuttering" can coexist

Vera: this is THE dilemma and the crux of any recovery. I'll give you
my answer (but each has to find hes own).

Work is the long term (beautiful) journey. Acceptance is for tripping along the way. It actually gets easier to accept tripping along the way, once you know that you have your eyes on a distant horizon. Note, like all horizons "fluency" will keep receding, but that's OK too. The journey is fun and tripping along the way will become less important and less intense. At some point you may find that you have been walking merrily for a while, enjoying the countryside, and won't know whether you haven't been tripping or you haven't paid attention to it. And you won't care which it was.

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Biography

Dr. Colombano is a retired NASA scientist with a Ph.D. in Biophysical Sciences. He struggled with stuttering in his youth and during most of his career, and he worked on understanding and dealing with the problem, ultimately reaching a level of fluency that is viewed as completely "normal". He is not a SLP (Speech Language Pathologist), and does not claim to be one, but most SLP's do not specialize in Stuttering Therapy and there are aspects of stuttering that are addressed more by "Coaching" than "Therapy". These are the aspects he covers and which are complementary to Stuttering Therapy. He has been a member of the National Stuttering Association (NSA), has given talks at their conferences and has been chapter leader in one of their self-help groups in San Francisco. He received year-long training at the Interchange Counseling Institute in San Francisco, and his coaching modality for stutterers has been based on the content of this course.