Cluttering therapy is a complex and personalized process that takes into account the individual’s speech production patterns, level of self-awareness, and any accompanying communication difficulties.
The goal is not only to improve speech intelligibility but also to build self-confidence, communication effectiveness, and self-monitoring skills.

Main Areas of Therapy

1.     
2. Improving articulation accuracy: Reducing sound omissions and fusions through targeted articulation training and structured repetition exercises.
3.     
4. Teaching effective pausing: Incorporating natural pauses using breathing techniques and structured reading or speaking tasks to support sentence segmentation.
5.     
6. Developing speech rhythm: Helping make the speaker’s "machine-gun" style speech more comprehensible by stabilizing the tempo and flow.
7.     
8. Establishing proper intonation and emphasis: Supporting a more natural and expressive style aligned with the patterns of spoken Hungarian (or native language).
9.     
10. Strengthening self-monitoring: Clients learn to recognize and gradually correct their own speech errors in real time. Tools such as video analysis and structured feedback are key—particularly through the Audio-Visual Feedback Training method currently being adapted into Hungarian.
11.     
12. Building communication confidence: Through guided practice in everyday social situations (e.g., ordering food, introducing oneself, presenting), clients can overcome negative experiences and rebuild their confidence.
13.     
14. Enhancing coherent speech organization: Tasks such as storytelling, picture description, and logical sequencing help improve the organization of thoughts during speech.

As cluttering therapists, we must understand that most individuals who clutter speak at a significantly faster articulation rate than average speakers.
However, simply asking them to “slow down” will not lead to lasting improvement, for two main reasons:

1.     
2. The rapid speech rate is usually a symptom, not the root cause of the problem.
3.     
4. Consciously slowing down speech requires continuous active effort, which clients often find unnatural and unsustainable.

Therefore, there is one sentence a cluttering therapist should never say to a client—the one they’ve likely heard thousands of times:

“Can you say that again, but slower?”

A Client’s Feedback

“The biggest change wasn't that I speak slower now, but that I'm no longer afraid to speak up—to order food in a restaurant—and people hardly ever ask me to repeat myself.”

 (Image source: Cluttering by Yvonne Van Zaalen)