Tim McAzzie discusses a common claim among people who stutter: "When I don't think about talking, I don't stutter." He explains that this idea is seductive yet misleading, as it ignores the role of anxiety and conscious effort to avoid stuttering. Drawing parallels to sports or performance, he notes that focusing on "not messing up" often leads to mistakes. The key, he argues, is to examine what one thinks about when stuttering occurs—typically trying to conceal it through fillers, avoidance, or other strategies. True change requires addressing both cognitive and motor aspects of stuttering. Using CBT, mindfulness, disclosure, voluntary stuttering, and targeted practice, individuals can reduce anxiety and reframe their mindset toward communication rather than avoidance. Tim shares his own experience as a speech pathologist who initially feared stuttering but later overcame it through postgraduate psychology and systematic desensitization. He emphasizes that achieving a state where stuttering is not a conscious focus is earned through courage, time, and therapeutic effort. The statement remains tempting, but real freedom comes from confronting and transforming the underlying thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate stuttering.
Hi, this is Tim McAzzie from Atlanta, Georgia. Today's topic is a statement I have heard countless times from people who stutter. They declare, "When I don't think about talking, I don't stutter." That is so seductive. And I've heard it for more than 30 years. What does that mean? Well, it kind of reminds me of sports. If you're thinking, "Don't miss it, don't miss it," you miss it. Whether it's from the free throw line or putting a piano recital, don't mess up, and you mess up. In this case, there's an unconscious don't stutter. So the question is, coming back to the statement, "If I don't think about talking, I don't stutter." The question is, "When you do stutter, what are you thinking about?" If we can't go under hypnosis and have somebody put us in a trance and control our mind and say, "You'll never think about stuttering again. Wouldn't that be seductive?" And that person would have a line from LA to Manhattan. Also reminds me of an article that's on my website called, "When the stuttering just dies." It's a classic, I think it was written in the 80s. You can find it on my website where the author, Jack, is talking about, he got to the point where he stopped focusing on stuttering and he uses words like floating and kind of depersonalizing this thing called stuttering. Can we get to the point where we're not thinking about stuttering? You can, using a lot of CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, disclosure, voluntary stuttering, a lot of different things, cooked up in a recipe to where you're really not thinking about stuttering. You're thinking about communicating. We also are talking about purpose and intention. When I go out for dinner and I'm going to sit down in a booth and there's one person I know and a couple I don't know. If I have anxiety in my body, what am I thinking about? Am I trying to conceal the fact that I stutter? When the server comes up, am I going to point to the menu for the server to say it for me? If I have anxiety, I'm probably trying not to stutter. People have difficulty with their name. Sometimes they'll work around it or the name of their college, their name of their company. And as they're trying so desperately not to stutter, they develop anxiety. They might put fillers in, so forth. So fillers, eye contact diversion, circumlocution, avoidance are all designed to conceal the stutter. So we come back to this statement, what I don't think about talking, I don't stutter. It has to take a scalpel and cut in. What are you thinking about when you do stutter? Cool. Because we can't just snap our finger and not think about talking and not think about stutter and we got to earn that. I'm going to give you a prime example. I came out of graduate school in 1992. I had my master's degree in speech pathology. I knew a lot folks about the tongue, the lips, the voice, the areas of the brain, the broken area, the feedback loop, the speech cortex. I knew about breathing, breath support. You name it. I knew all of that. Some folks know it better than I. I don't have a PhD, but I'm doing okay. So I come out of graduate school. I'm walking around hospital with a white lab coat with my name on it, Tim McAsy's speech pathology. I was terrified to stutter. I had developed all this fear and shame. I can't stutter as a speech pathologist. I even had trouble saying speech pathologist. So one day I would say speech therapist, speech teacher, speech coach. And I cooked up a phobia of stuttering. I'll tell you, here I am out of graduate school in four about a year. It's like I went through a portal and went back to my high school stuttering. Then after graduate school, I spent a fortune in postgraduate for psychology. And that's how I figured out all the thinking-feeling part of stuttering using CBT, removing anxiety, fear, reframing my thoughts. Now I can say my name, speech pathologist. I can call a physician, ask for orders. I could do all those things. And largely now it's just automatic. For a while I had to go through therapeutic steps to be able to make the call in a fashion that I wanted to. I used to call a doctor's office and Tim McAsy and people would hang up. I got laughed at one time. Had a doctor's office. I've been laughed at a lot when I was younger. So wouldn't it be nice if I could wave a wand and all those years just not think about stuttering? But remember the special sauce is when you're stuttering anxiety, anxious, what are you thinking? How do you create the opposite of not thinking about talking? So in a nutshell, when we have eliminated our anxiety, we have benefited from CBT and mindfulness. Maybe join a support group to reduce the meaning and shame of stuttering. We do disclosure. Tell people we stutter. Many of us do benefit from some techniques. Like I had to learn to hum and hum from my last name, McAsy, because I had silent blocking. When I moved to Atlanta, I trouble with the word Atlanta. So I worked on Atlanta. I do go after specific word, fears, sounds and words, both cognitively, the shame, embarrassment and fear of the sound, as well as speech motor. How do you use my lips, tongue, or voice? And then I stress-tust it. Maybe I make phone calls. So you can get to the point where you have this source of freedom. It takes time. It takes a lot of courage. And it's the only way you're going to earn it. Because the statement, when I don't think about talking, I don't stutter. Again, it's very seductive. But to change, you have to evaluate all the things we're doing that are getting in the way. Does that make sense? Have a great day. Thanks for listening.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The statement "When I don't think about talking, I don't stutter" is appealing but misleading, as it overlooks the underlying anxiety and conscious efforts to avoid stuttering.
Stuttering often intensifies when individuals focus on concealing it, leading to behaviors like fillers, eye contact diversion, circumlocution, and avoidance.
True progress requires addressing both cognitive aspects (e.g., fear, shame) and speech motor skills through methods like CBT, mindfulness, disclosure, voluntary stuttering, and targeted practice.
The speaker's personal journey—from being a terrified speech pathologist to achieving automatic fluent communication—illustrates that earning this freedom takes time, courage, and therapeutic work.
Summary:
" He explains that this idea is seductive yet misleading, as it ignores the role of anxiety and conscious effort to avoid stuttering. Drawing parallels to sports or performance, he notes that focusing on "not messing up" often leads to mistakes. The key, he argues, is to examine what one thinks about when stuttering occurs—typically trying to conceal it through fillers, avoidance, or other strategies.
True change requires addressing both cognitive and motor aspects of stuttering. Using CBT, mindfulness, disclosure, voluntary stuttering, and targeted practice, individuals can reduce anxiety and reframe their mindset toward communication rather than avoidance. Tim shares his own experience as a speech pathologist who initially feared stuttering but later overcame it through postgraduate psychology and systematic desensitization.
He emphasizes that achieving a state where stuttering is not a conscious focus is earned through courage, time, and therapeutic effort. The statement remains tempting, but real freedom comes from confronting and transforming the underlying thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate stuttering.
FAQs
It suggests that stuttering can be reduced when a person stops consciously focusing on their speech, similar to how overthinking a sports move can lead to mistakes.
It's seductive because it implies a simple solution, but in reality, achieving that state requires effort through therapy and practice, not just snapping your fingers.
Behaviors include fillers, eye contact diversion, circumlocution, and avoidance, all designed to hide the stutter.
CBT helps remove anxiety and fear, reframe thoughts, and reduce the focus on stuttering, allowing a person to think more about communicating.
The special sauce involves evaluating what you're thinking when anxious and stuttering, then working to eliminate anxiety through CBT, mindfulness, disclosure, and support groups.
He used CBT, voluntary stuttering, and specific techniques like humming for difficult words, along with stress-testing through phone calls, to eventually speak automatically without fear.
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