Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP is the study of human subjective experience. The field aims to give understanding to why we humans think and behave the way we do, and provides tools to model and replicate thought patterns and behaviours demonstrated by the most successful of individuals. NLP can also be used to model unhelpful thoughts and behaviours and can help people to create better, more empowering ways of being instead. It can be used in numerous fields ranging from sport to leadership. What about Neuro-Linguistic programming for stuttering? Read on to learn about two ways how NLP can be used for stuttering.

Observe negative thought patterns and their structures

Although stuttering is mainly characterised by the struggle to speak; these challenges with saying what a person wants to say can be associated with huge amounts of fear, worry, and anxiety. For instance, if you’re a person who stutters, you might worry about having to tell family members you don’t see very often about your work when they ask you. The ‘worry’ has a structure in your mind and body.

For example an aunt might be coming to visit your house at the weekend. Although this event hasn’t happened, your mind is already creating an internal movie of the last time your aunt came to your place, and she asked you how you were getting on at work. You stuttered in a way which you perceived as being ‘badly’. You recreate this whole experience in your mind again, feeling bad, even though it isn’t happening right this very minute. Just the knowledge of your aunt about to come to your house soon creates this internal mayhem in you again. By observing this internal ‘movie’ of when your aunt visited last time, you can start to do different things. You can observe it as being just a ‘movie’, or a ‘thought’ – something that happened once before and isn’t happening at this moment. By observing the internal experience structurally from a distance, rather than getting caught up in the movie or thought again, you can play around with how you feel. This then allows you to do the following.

Change negative thought patterns to more useful and empowering ones

Try it now. Think of a time recently when you stuttered, felt real bad and get a movie of it in your mind. However, instead of looking out of your own eyes into the movie, observe it like a spectator from a distance looking at yourself in the movie. Does this lessen the intensity of the negative feelings? If it does, you’ve just experienced how you can change the structure of your thoughts and alter the experience it creates in your body.

Another way of changing a negative thought or movie about stuttering is to create an empowering state, which could be of use to you. Just like you can re-create a negative experience around stuttering, you can also create another state – let’s say confidence. Try this one now. Remember a time when you were really confident. It doesn’t matter if the time was even some years back. Perhaps you were on vacation swimming in the ocean and you and felt really confident doing so. Create a movie of this experience on the screen of your mind so that it feels as if you’re having this confident episode again. Really crank up this confidence and when you’re feeling super confident, using your imagination, apply this confidence on top of the negative movie of your stuttering recently. Does this confident state overpower the negative movie about stuttering? If so, you’ve just completely transformed a negative experience about stuttering into something more useful and resourceful.

Want to learn more about how NLP can help you with stuttering? You may be interested in NLP coaching I offer for stuttering.

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