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I coined the term "lazy tongue," which basically speaks for itself. When the affected person attempts to speak, it seems that the tongue is lazy and twisted. It simply doesn't move fast enough to enunciate what is spoken resulting in slurred speech and or stuttering. It often feels as though the tongue is enlarged and is easy to bite--rather painful.
There is a difference between lazy tongue and stuttering. Usually stuttering is not associated with a lazy tongue, but more often is associated with excessive tension in the mouth. Whereas one can begin suffering from lazy tongue at any age, stuttering is usually left over from child hood.
Yet, the issues with both lazy tongue and stuttering are similar. Stuttering is often associated with a poor self image resulting from a conditioning experience of an embarrassing nature as a youngster, or having an overbearing and or critical parent. Lazy tongue, on the other hand, is usually the result of a major stressor such as loss of a marriage, death of a loved one, loss of a job...
With both lazy tongue and stuttering, there is a situation of low self esteem. Never the less, a boost in self esteem (although helpful) usually will not solve either problem without stress management intervention.
For example, Joe, away at college, was 19 years of age. Even though he stuttered since elementary school he successfully stopped all stuttering within three weeks of stress management training. During semester break he returned home and promised his father to clean the garage one Saturday.
For some reason Joe was distracted and never got around to cleaning the garage. When his dad came home from work later on that day, he noticed the garage wasn't cleaned, and called Joel a "stupid shit," for not cleaning the garage.
Guess what, Joe's stuttering returned instantly.
This is an example of an overbearing, over critical parent who in combination with the son's sensitive nature, contributed to his son's stuttering which most often makes overcoming stuttering a two part program.
1. Using basic stress management skills involving deep rhythmic breathing, and muscle tensing relaxation exercises for the various muscles of the jaw, mouth, and tongue. The deep breathing into the diaphragm is for composure. The muscle exercises are to stretch the jaw in various directions, stretch the tongue and press it against various locations in the mouth. It also involves tensing the facial muscles. Each time the muscles are tensed, they are tensed to the point of extreme discomfort--almost to the point of fatigue. Then the tension is then released and self mental programming is done. Self programming is to affirm which feelings are preferred (relaxed ones) and which are disliked (tense ones).
2. Self hypnotic affirmations are used to change the perspective so as to build confidence and create building self esteem. Focus is on dealing with the emotions of rejection, disappointment, and frustration. Through hypnosis the individual moves to embrace the emotion and then move beyond it to benefit from the experience. The individual moves to a point where he/she can feel good about self on a "bad hair day."
An effective approach to lazy tongue and stuttering involves more than one approach. Whereas many programs only focus on the mechanical, you wonder why the obvious self esteem issues are left out or only dealt with in passing. It's clearly a mistake to ignore either the stress management or the self esteem issues. Doing the physical exercises and dealing with the mental issues of building self esteem produces real results.
Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E., NGH certified is a prominent figure in the field of stress management. His best selling cds for managing stress are at http://www.DStressDoc.com and http://www.PanicBusters.com His aim is to raise awareness as to how using basic stress management skills can be used to over come stuttering and lazy tongue syndrome. To find out more please visit http://www.dstressdoc.com/TwistedTongue.htm
