[Neurons] 2011 Meta Reflections #16

[L. Michael Hall]

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Meta Reflections 2011 - #16

April 5, 2011

A Practical Application regard

Semantic Reactions

 

 

CHALLENGING, PROVOKING,

TEASING, AND MASTERING

THE EXPERIENCE OF STUTTERING

                                                            

 

The very first time that Bob Bodenhamer and I used The Matrix Model to model
was the experience of speaking dis-fluency called "stuttering."  I initiated
that as I had followed the work of speech pathologist, Wendell Johnson.   In
his book, People in Quandaries, he wrote a chapter about several American
Indian tribes wherein he could find no one who stuttered.  Later he
discovered that people from those tribes did stutter when they lived in
other cultures, but not in their original culture.  He also discovered that
in their original culture and language, there was no word in those languages
for "stuttering" or "stammering."  It did not exist!

 

And if an experience is not punctuated by language and set apart as a
separate entity or experience, people don't notice it.  For them, that
experience does not exist.  In fact, in trying to explain what stuttering
was, Dr. Johnson imitated stuttering and the elders in those tribes laughed.
They thought it was silly.  Now, not so surprising, Wendell Johnson had
stuttered himself as a young boy and that was one of the reasons for
entering the field of speech pathology.  What separated him from most in
that field was that he applied the revolutionary work of Alfred Korzybski in
General Semantics to the experience of stuttering and as a result, he cured
himself.  And it was his original work that got my attention and led Bob and
I to write several articles about the Neuro-Semantic approach to stuttering.

 

Now in 2011 there is a movie about stuttering, The King's Speech.  It is
dated in the 1930s when the young man who became the King of England during
Hitler's time and prior to World War II suffered from this speech
dysfunction.  And the person who became his speech trainer / coach was an
Australian who used various techniques to facilitate mastering over
stuttering.  What did he do?

 

He challenged the frames.  Stuttering is not a problem with breathing or
genetics; it is a problem of a person's frames.  To create a good case of
stuttering there are certain belief frames that you have to adopt.  You have
to believe such things as:

Mis-speaking is a terrible, horrible, and awful experience (Meaning matrix).

            Not speaking fluently means I'm inadequate as a person (Self
matrix).

Not speaking fluently means no one will like me, want to be around me, value
me, love me, but will laugh at me and reject me (Others matrix).

I have to stop myself from stuttering and pay attention to each and every
word that comes out of my mouth (Intention matrix).

But it's impossible, I can't stop it, trying to stop it only makes it worse,
this means that I'm powerless and helpless against this, I must indeed be
inadequate as a human being (Power matrix and Self matrix).

So now my future with others, with a career is ruined (Others, World of
Career, and Time matrices).

 

Now if you adopt frames like these, you will be semantically loading the
experience of speaking so that any and every form of mis-speaking or
searching for words.  Do that and you will be creating a semantic reaction
of fear, dread, anxiety, and worry about speaking.  This is what Dr. Bob
found in working with so many individuals who stutter- they have created not
merely a fear of mis-speaking, but a phobia of mis-speaking.  And that
became his hypothesis about stuttering: Stuttering is a phobia of
mis-speaking located in the throat.  That is, the person has mind-to-muscled
the fearful frames about stuttering so that those frames now inform and
govern one's person's breathing and speaking.

 

The problem here?  The frames!  The problem that anyone who stutters is not
them.  They are not the problem.  They are not inadequate.  They are fine
and work perfectly well.  The problem is their frames!  The belief,
understanding, decision, identity, etc. frames listed above- those frames is
the problem.  And that is why when you change those frames, the performance
of the behavior of stuttering changes.

 

This is what most stutterers do, they semantically over-load the speaking
experience and give it far too much meaning.  They make their identity,
their value as a person, their relationships with others for all time, etc.
dependent on their tongue and lips.  How they speak determines everything!
So they over-generalize; they awfulize; and they bring a demanding-ness to
speaking fluently.

 

1) Fearful Demanding-ness.  In the movie, The King's Speech, that's what
Lyonal did with Bertie, the King of England.  He challenges his frames.

First he challenged his frames about the demanding-ness.  "Bertie, call me
Lyonal, here we are equals."  This was to change the context (which changes
meaning).  Later he said, "Say it to me as a friend." 

 

What Bob and I found out about stuttering was that every person who stutters
have exceptions- places, times, and persons with whom they do not stutter.
When do you not stutter?  Do you stutter with your dog?  Do you stutter when
you pray?  In the movie, Lyonal asked, "Do you stutter when you think?"
"No, of course not."  Ah, so here's an exception!  So you do know how to
think or pray or talk to your dog without stuttering!  So if there's an
exception, what is the difference that makes a difference in that exception?
If you develop that, you have developed a powerful first step to a
resolution.

 

If you stutter, notice the demanding-ness in your mind when you tell
yourself to not stuttering.  What that does with the automatic nature of
speech is create a command negation that will make it worse.  It is the same
kind of demandingness that you create when you can't sleep at night and you
say to yourself, "I have to get some sleep; okay, try really hard now to
sleep!"

 

So what's a person to do?  Get ready for a surprise and a paradox-give up
the need and demandingness!  When you fully accept not-sleeping, and just
notice it, you fall asleep.  So with speaking, just accept the stuttering
and notice it and welcome it by practicing it.  This paradoxical injunction:
Try to not-sleep.  Try to not-be-fluent.  Go ahead and notice your
non-sleeping- your non-fluency.

 

In the movie, Lyonal asked Bertie to sing it.  Find a tune that you know
well and whatever it is that you are trying to say, sing it.  "Sounds let it
flow" Lyonal explained.  This both accepts the experience and changes one
element in the experience.  The King thought it silly, ridiculous and
refused to do it, at first, then he found that he could move through the
blocking and stuckness by using a tune and putting the words to the tune.

 


>From the Meta-States Model perspective, applying the state of fear to

mis-speaking creates a phobia and panic about it.  It frames the utterance
of words with fear.   Mis-speaking now becomes a member of the class of
fear.  So when you meta-state the mis-speaking with a very different state-
acceptance, exploration, curiosity, fun, playfulness, humor, etc.- it
radically changes things.  That's what I always do.  I will intentionally
stutter on "s" or "f" or "p" or other letters and then provoke and tease the
person, "Can you do better than that!?"  The purpose is to get the person to
play with it, to bring fun and humor to the mis-speaking.

 

This reduces the semantic loading and changes the frame from fear to fun.
For most, it is the first time in their lives that they have ever treated
the mis-speaking from a non-serious and even playful way.

 

2) Cruel Judgments and Judgmentalism.  In the movie, the King did not want
to talk about his personal history or anything personal.  He viewed the
problem as strictly and as only behavioral.  But the problem isn't
behavioral, it is semantic- it is the frames of meaning that the person
gives to the behavior.  So it took a long while, but eventually the King
talked about being mercilessly teased about the mis-speaking as a young boy,
teased by his brother who put him down and judged him for it, as well as by
his father.  Lyonal's comments?

"You don't need to be afraid of the things you were afraid of at five.  You
are your own man now."

 

What great frames!  The past-is-the-past and what you feared as a
five-year-old doesn't need to be fearful now as a man.  You once were
controlled by others, now you are your own person.  Breaking the judgment
frames is critical.  First we have to master the childish fear that others
will judge us and that will be terrible.  And yet even more important is
that we have to master our own self-judgments.

 

The movie portrayed this in a fascinating way.  It occurred when Lyonal
invited the King to read a famous writing.  When he did, because he could
hear himself, he was simultaneously judging himself.  But when Lyonal turned
up some music and played it so loud the King could not hear himself reading,
he read the literature fluently, only he did not recognize it.  And because
he was so impatient, so self-critical, so non-accepting of the process-he
stormed out.  He did take the recording with him that Lyonal had made and at
a later time, late at night, he put on the record and listened.  He was
amazed!  The recording only recorded his voice and not the loud music and he
was reading fluently.  Why?  What was the difference?  When he could not
hear himself, he was not judging himself.

 

The problem that creates stuttering is the judgment frame!  This is so
human.  This is so common.  I've never met a human being who didn't have the
well-develop skill of judging him or herself!  And judging self or judging
others seems to be so developed with us that what most of us have to learn
is how to suspend judgment. [By the way, we have a Neuro-Semantic pattern
just for this, the "Releasing Judgment" pattern which we have all
Meta-Coaches and Neuro-Semantic Trainers experience on day one of the
training.]

 

The movie portrayed another process in the movie was Lyonal provoking the
King to anger.  He noticed that when he got angry enough to curse, that at
that point he did not stutter.  "Do you know the F word?" he asked.  At
another time he "reproved" and "commanded" him regarding sitting in a chair,
"You can't sit there!" and that frustrated and angered the King to be talked
that way by a commoner!  Lyonal brought his fluent-while-cursing to his
attention.

 

So what's going on with that?  When he moved beyond the frame of caring what
people think, when he was frustrated or angry enough to curse- he was
fluent!

 

Finally there was the scene where Lyonal brought Bertie into his home and
there was a model plane on the table in the process of being put together.
When the King was a child he was not allowed to play with model planes, so
Lyonal encouraged him to play with it and as he became preoccupied and
focused on the plane, his speech became more and more fluent.  Ah, again, it
was an experience that moved him outside of his usual frames of judgment,
disapproval, and over-consciousness of speaking.

 

Whenever you have an automatic, non-conscious behavior like sleeping or
speaking, when you become conscious of such and then meta-state yourself
with states like fear, demandingness, and judgment-you can really mess
things up!  It is the same process when you learn something so well, when
you over-learn it, then the performance drops out of conscious awareness and
operates automatically like playing any sport, driving, tying a tie, etc.
Then if you start noticing it, and especially with judgment, you can really
screw it up. [By the way, this is why some people fallaciously think that
consciousness is the problem.  It is not.  The problem isn't awareness, but
the kind of awareness- judgmental, fearful awareness.]

 

Mis-speaking is just that- mis-speaking.  So don't over-load it with too
much meaning.  Don't put your self-esteem as a person on the line for that.
Don't semantically load it with meanings about relationships.  Instead,
welcome it.  Embrace it.  Play with it.  Enjoy it!  Yes, enjoy the
stuttering!  That's why, when I coach a stutterer, I always give the
assignment: "Every morning when you are dressing and getting ready for the
day, practice stuttering for five minutes."  Why?  Because if you can "turn
it on" then it becomes yours!  You have it instead of the experience having
you and you hating its control over your life.

 

 

For more on Stuttering --- see the website:
<http://www.masteringstuttering.com> www.masteringstuttering.com

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics Executive Director  ----   <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA                             ----
<http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

1 970-523-7877                                               ----
<http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org

 

     

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Reflection articles by Dr. Hall are sent out every Monday (Colorado time).
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Wednesdays.   Contact Dr. Hall at  meta at acsol.net  

 

 

 

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