10 Easy Tips for Stammering-Free Breezy Speech!

10 Easy Tips for Stammering-Free Breezy Speech!

Stuttering, commonly known as stammering is a speech disorder affecting the natural fluency of speech. Stutters or stammers are characterized by disruptions or interruptions in production of speech sounds. These interruptions are termed as ‘dysfluencies’. They often arise due to built-up tension in speech muscles, anxiety and fear of stressful situations.

Stammering can at times impact the communication performance of an individual, thereby impacting their daily activities and social life. There are several ways to alleviate these dysfluencies and improve the natural flow of speech.

Let’s look at a few tips to gain control over our speech.

• Do not rush. Take all the time you need to say what you want to say. Rushing ideas will increase anxiety and in turn lead to interrupted speech.

• Take easy and natural breaths before starting a sentence. Natural breaths relax the articulatory muscles and calm the body, enabling you to articulate words fluently.

• Take a calculated pause before difficult words. When you feel you are going to stammer on a particular word, pause for a short while. Make sure to move your mouth as much as possible while uttering the word. This makes you better prepared, relaxes your muscles and allows smooth release of words.

• Prolong the sound that you feel you will stammer on. Prolonging the initial sound or syllable of the word that you anticipate stammering will give you ample time to eliminate any stress that builds up and release the block.

• Plan what you want to say. Framing your content and sentences before starting to speak will reduce the stress on mind while speaking.

• Use a rhythmic intonation (sing-song pattern) while speaking. This gives the mind time to process words and reduces rate of speech, leading to easy flowing speech.
• Use delayed auditory feedback techniques. Listening to your own voice, a fraction of second later than when you uttered it provides an excellent mechanism of reducing the fear and anticipation associated with it. This thereby leads to easy flow of words.
• Approach feared speaking situations. Identify stressful situations in which stammering increases, and work on releasing stress. Start with least stressful situations and move on to enter the most stressful situations.
• Do not fear stammering. Assure yourself that it’s going to be fine. Maintain eye-contact with the audience and hold confidence. Overcome your fear associated with stuttering and face the speaking situation bravely. A tension-free and fear-free mind better facilitates accurate processing of words and phrases that you want to utter.
• Practice voluntary stammer. At times producing a voluntary stammer provides a sense of control over your stammering. This sense of control enables you to reduce the occurrence of actual stammering instances.

Seek Professional Help

Speech Therapy and Psychological Counselling can help those who stutter be more fluent and confident while speaking!

• One can begin with the identification of stuttering events, speaking slowly and more fluently using certain techniques and analogies to be used during the stuttering events during the course of speech therapy. Therapists help achieve fluent speech in children and adults with stuttering.  Speech-Language Pathologists also help in speaking in social situations, building confidence for public speaking, getting rid of negative emotions associated with speaking situations, tension or fears are dealt with for bringing about better communication skills in the child or adult with stuttering.
• Psychological counseling and/or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy helps to identify the underlying causes such as anxiety, embarrassment, low confidence, negative feelings, and attitudes associated with stuttering and overcoming them.

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