The iceberg analogy has been used for years in occupational and clinical studies. The unique geological characteristic of an iceberg is that only 10% of the iceberg is above water. The majority of the iceberg is hidden by the freezing waters of the Polar Regions.
In the past, I was always looking for the silver bullet, the quick fix or magic potion. That little piece of advice or strategy that would finally propel me into fluency. With that strategy, I was only focusing on 10% of my personal iceberg, or that part that was seen immediately by those around me.
The speech therapies I tried several times in the past only reinforced this shortsightedness by focusing on the 10%. While I achieved some fluency improvements in the sterile, comfort zones of clinics and pathology labs, those improvements were short-lived and non sustainable in real world application. This is not an affront against those practitioners since I take as much, if not more, responsibility for the failure to address that 90% that was always waiting for me outside the therapist’s office, every minute or every hour of every day of my life.
