Putting Down the Sword: The Role of Acceptance in Stuttering Treatment

I exist as I am—that is enough, If no other in the world be aware, I sit content, And if each and all be aware, I sit content. ~ Walt Whitman Those lines from Whitman (n.d.) illustrate an ideal—a person completely comfortable in his own skin, at peace in the world and with himself. I believe this is what most clients receiving stuttering treatment want, or at least something very close to it. However they reach that state of insouciance and self-assuredness is immaterial. Some may get there by learning to speak more fluently, some by learning to stutter more easily. Some clients may prefer to rid themselves of the desire to change their speech at all and end up discarding management skills altogether (Venkatagiri, 2009). Each are valid endeavors, and each involves grappling with and resolving the problem of acceptance. The notion that accepting one's challenges is central to the therapeutic process is not unique to our field. One will find the concept throughout the literature on numerous behavioral and psychiatric conditions, such as 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, grief counseling, weight loss interventions, and psychotherapeutic techniques for depression and anxiety (Forman & Herbert, 2009; Hayes & Strosahl, 2005). But what does the construct itself mean? In one sense, acceptance is simply acquiescing to plain facts, however unpleasant they may seem: " I'm unable to control my drinking, " " I've been depressed for several months, " " I sometimes stutter when I talk. " For our purposes, I will focus on another sense of the term: self-acceptance. This form of acceptance involves a person's capacity to value himself or herself despite perceived limitations or deficiencies. In stuttering treatment, acceptance comes when a client sheds resistant behaviors, attitudes, and cognitions. These often can be quite entrenched in adults who stutter, and may be heading that way in younger clients. Attitudes and cognitions are likely to involve negative appraisals of one's self and one's capabilities as a communicator, while resistant behaviors usually take the form of avoidances (Guitar, 2005; Vanryckeghem & Brutten, 1996). When we seek to foster acceptance in our clients, what we are really trying to do is promote self-compassion in place of self-contempt. We want to help our clients allow the unallowable. Why ask a client to do such a thing? Precisely because it is often the antipathy to stuttered speech— and even to being a person …