Acceptance Is the Same Height as A Human Being
Basic acceptance of reality
• Sun rises in the East
• Life is challenging for everyone
• We are by nature fallible, limited, non-perfectible
• We cannot make demands on universe, others, and even ourselves and expect that these demands will be fulfilled
• But we can strongly desire certain goals and in most probability achieve them or come close
Acceptance of reality about stuttering
• Right now you stutter the way you stutter right now; acknowledge it
• You can’t demand it to change, but you can strongly desire it to change and work towards changing it
• You can almost instantly realize that stuttering is not awful: 1) it does not cause unbearable pain, 2) you can still enjoy many, many other things
• You can decide not to beat upon yourself (deprecate yourself) for stuttering
• You can think hard and realize that all people have equal worth in the eyes of the universe (we all are born, live, and die).
• Stuttering can’t make you less worthwhile.
• There is no law in the universe that you should not stutter.
• Stuttering causes some discomfort-but you can stand it: you have stood it so far
• In time you can minimize stuttering severity and frequency, but there is no guarantee that you will totally eliminate it.
Acceptance of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) ideas about stuttering
• Stuttering probably has genetic component and a learned component
• With effort and time the learned part: the forcing, struggling, hard contact blocks, and elongations can be minimized
• With effort and time feelings of inferiority, shame, anxiety, guilt, time urgency, low tolerance of frustration and discomfort, anger at self or others, and the feelings of helplessness/hopelessness, and the avoidances can be radically cut back
• The accessory (secondary) behaviors can be practically eliminated.
Acceptance That You Have a Choice
• You have a choice whether to work on your speech to minimize struggle and unhealthy negative emotions or do nothing.
• You have a choice which approach to use.
• Not learning about the different approaches and not using blood, sweat, and tears to apply a new approach in your self-therapy (if your present one is not working) is a choice. Not doing anything is a choice to remain in the same state of stuttering. You have a right to do so. YOU can live a good life, whether you stutter or not.
Summarizing Acceptance
• Don’t demonize stuttering
• Don’t awfulize it
• Don’t pull off an “I-can’t-stand-it”
• Don’t deprecate or down yourself because of stuttering
• Stuttering does not make you a child of a lesser god
• Don’t trivialize it
• Accept that stuttering does have its inconveniences
• Humanize stuttering
• Learn to live with it in daily life until you decide to do something about it
Acknowledge and Learn to Accept Our Relationship to Others
• People Who Stutter (PWS) have a need to be accepted by others
• See this need for what it is-a strong desire that we turned into a need
• Understand that we can turn it back into being only a strong desire to be accepted
• Work relentlessly until it only is a desire to be accepted
• We are more sensitive to others’ opinions especially teasing and bullying
• Accept that there will be unpleasant people around
• But we can toughen ourselves
• We can call on our resiliency
• There are some practical drawbacks to stuttering, some discomforts, some frustrations
• Learn to live with it in daily life until you decide to do something about it
Final Words: Accept Yourself Unconditionally
• Don’t fall for conditional self-esteem, don’t say “I can esteem myself because I can do this or do that, have this or that, am liked by this or that”
• No matter how you fail understand, you can still love yourself
• We are by nature fallible, limited, non-perfectible
• We cannot make demands on universe, others, and even ourselves
• We can choose to work diligently to recover from stuttering