The Skidding Car

The Skidding Car

I am writing this to clarify a couple of misconception that have / may arise. During my past discussions and conversations I often came around two common misconceptions that I want to clarify.

Misconception 1: TISA dislikes Speech Therapists

TISA doesn’t have any animosity against the Speech Therapists. Our stand about speech therapy is documented here: http://t-tisa.blogspot.in/2012/08/which-therapist.html

As per our policies, we don’t endorse any speech therapy on the TISA platform. We talk about only self-help approach with acceptance.

TISA never stops anyone from going to a speech therapists. People are free to venture and try out. You could also give a review / feedback on therapies, but endorsing of the likes- “Go to this therapy and you will be cured” is certainly not recommended.

TISA strives to spread awareness on therapies and other alternative approaches which could dupe the PWS of their money by promising a ‘cure’. We often see that there is a relapse. Stammer comes again. Because that is the nature of stammering. Nothing wrong. But if ‘cure’ was promised then there shouldn’t be a relapse. So, it’s a question of ethics.

Misconception 2: ‘Acceptance’ is accepting stammering is incurable and do nothing about it.

Acceptance by no way means accepting that there is no cure and do nothing about it. If this is how it is interpreted, then we are missing a big point here. We encourage people to work on their communication skills instead of chasing fluency. Yes, we should not stop or give up. We should work on communication skills. And that is much more than fluency- voice modulation, body language, language, vocabulary and much more.

Befriending your stammering begins to melt the unseen part of iceberg that lies inside the mind. Once that burden is off, we can do much better in everything. We are not our stammering, and stammering is not us.

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In simple words this can be explained by a simple analogy that my good friend JP once gave in workshop. If my car skids in the right direction, I try to steer in the left direction to prevent it from skidding. But in fact that makes the car skid more. It’s when we realize that we need to steer in the same direction that it skids… that is the time we realize that we have control over the skidding car.

The skidding car analogy explains the whole story. We only need to understand it.