Speech Therapy - Sharpen Up (Did I Really Say That?)
Written by Julie Taylor
Sharpen Up - Did I Really Say That?
One of the big misnomers, I think, is the term 'speech therapy' - which is not just helping to eleviate stuttering and the inability to form words correctly. It's also about re-learning how to find the right words when you need them. Not just the mechanics of the voice and speaking but the cognitive 'brain' part of Language or finding and using words.
There is a wonderful series of new adult speech and language therapy books written by top speech and language pathologists Hilary Dibben and Anita Kess called 'What I Mean Is' for those with higher functioning speech and language loss...
When I first attended Neuro-Rehab at my local hospital I checked out the menu of the various therapies available. I figured – correctly – that I needed APT (Attention Process Training), OT (Occupational Therapy - where Occupational actually means anything and everything that we do, including work) and Physiotherapy. I couldn't quite see the point of Recreational Therapy (I do now) and I thought for sure I didn't need Speech Therapy let alone Listening Therapy... I almost missed the chance to work on one of the things I value most: language and words.
Speech therapy is actually all about communication - filing away words, correctly using categories and manipulating our very language so that we can retrieve just the right word at will. It’s about listening and performing the mental gymnastics necessary to express yourself clearly. More than anything, it’s about your listener. In communication your aim is to paint a picture for the person you are speaking to... So they can imagine, visualise and understand perfectly what is in your mind.
You may decide that all these various therapies could wait... Life is busy and there are almost certainly things on your ‘to do’ list that seem more pressing or important. Maybe you come to the decision that you don’t really need these therapies or that they’re not ‘for you’, at least not right now… But how will you decide ‘when’ the time is right? And how on earth will you know if you even need them? Here, perhaps more than in any other part of ReBuilding, you need someone else to point out to you where you are weak and need help and the very best person to do this is the speech therapist. You are you so it's very hard to step back and evaluate your own thinking. For me, I wish I'd realized and done this years ago.
It is difficult to know whether or not some things that we do are different from ‘normal’ because they are part of us. One of the most valuable things for me in every therapy including physiotherapy is to see the therapist perform the task at least once so that I have a measure of what 'normal' looks like, which is my goal, and the therapist can draw my attention to certain deficits I might have and help me work toward achieving my goal.
After twenty plus years, I thought that my language skills were ‘just fine’ - because the feedback I received indicated that 'things' were normal and fine, which they could have been... Except for me words and language and communication is more important than just about anything and so, for me, being 'good enough' was very frustrating. After a trauma no-one likes to point out your defecits - which may resolve anyway - but a speech therapist will! New friends accept you as you are and never know that, deep inside you, there is 'more' waiting to spring out. Somehow speech therapists know just exactly where you're weak and how to strengthen your language.
For example, I will be constantly updating my site as my 'understanding/feeling' for structure and organization grows. In fact, one of the other factors which helped me to finally start this site and put down on paper what was in my mind, was the shift in being able to understand the very 'how' of how to do it. I love to write but organizing my files was a challenge. My speech therapist was pivotal.
Don’t cheat yourself out of the life you deserve. DO IT NOW! Work out a plan using this site as a guide and discuss it with your doctor. It’s not easy when you don’t know what help is available and the fact that so many of these therapies have names that are so unclear leads to misunderstanding. That is why I want to talk about all of the therapies that I do know about here so that you can ask to be referred to see the correct specialists and at least find out whether their therapies could help you.
I will describe the various Speech Therapies and Listening Group in more detail later and I will see if I can put a couple of examples of it in the downloads section (not made yet).
Meanwhile keep on working on what you know deep down you still need to... This is a great link to help your language skills and it adjusts automatically to your individual skill level. It challenges me and it challenges my speech therapist! There's no money or purchase involved and the exercise is exactly one of those used to help with vocabulary and communication. For every correct answer that you give, 20 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations, who will distribute it where there is hunger. Go to: freerice.com I love that by helping ourselves we are also helping others...
And doing something fun for ourselves, good for our brains and best of all, satisfying one of the most basic needs on our planet - food for the hungry - costs us nothing. The money to keep this program alive comes from the advertisers that use the freerice pages.
If you know about a therapy that is not mentioned on this website, please email me and let me know!