In the United States, a stroke attack happens every 40 seconds. Communication challenges are not rare in people who survived a stroke. Specifically, over 30% of people who experienced stroke have their communication handicapped afterward.
Yes, just as stroke affects your motor skills, emotional intelligence, and memory, stroke also impacts your language. Depending on the type of stroke, one's language processing capacity can be impaired.
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In other instances, stroke can paralyze the tongue or introduce weakness to the throat muscles. Consequently, a stroke survivor can experience difficulty in swallowing and managing his or her breathing rhythm. All these come together to impede sound formation.
Speech difficulties – as relating to stroke – are typically associated with aphasia. I will tell you more about this.
Aphasia and what it means for your conversation skills
Aphasia results from the stroke damaging the brain's sector responsible for managing language processing and speech formation. This sector is the language control center.
There are two types of aphasia – depending on which brain area was affected. These are expressive aphasia and receptive aphasia, each with differing impacts on one's communication skills.
Receptive aphasia results from the stroke affecting the brain's Wernicke area. This brain sector accommodates the motor neurons responsible for understanding speech.
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Therefore, receptive aphasia makes it difficult to comprehend complex sentences (particularly lengthy ones). Individuals with receptive aphasia will also struggle to extract meaning from a conversation involving two or more parties. This is typical when such parties talk concurrently.
This comprehension impediment also happens when music is played in the background. In such conditions, an individual with receptive aphasia would interpret what is said as unintelligible sound. Their speech would also lose coherence.
Expressive aphasia occurs when the brain's Broca area is impacted. A stroke survivor with expressive aphasia may have no issues comprehending others' speeches. However, he or she would struggle to express themself coherently with words.
This class of stroke survivors can intelligently formulate the words into meaningful sentences but fail to speak them. It is not uncommon to see these individuals missing words or misusing words in their sentences.
Aside from this, stroke can also affect an individual's ability to sustain mutual conversations where participants speak in turns.
They may also lack the tone needed to transmit the emotional component of their speeches. A person who had a stroke could also have issues detecting the humor in a conversation.
READ: Can You Do Stroke Rehab At Home?
What is the way forward, then?
To repair your communication, it is recommended to leverage speech therapy. This can be done independently or via a professional speech therapist.
A speech therapist will help you with critical components of your post-stroke rehabilitation, like improving your swallowing, speech formation, and overall visual communication clues.
With such professional guidance, you get tested-and-proven templates for repeating words, rehearsing speech (with strategic emphasis on consonants and vowels), reading, sustainably engaging in conversations with multiple parties, and overall understanding longer sentences.
That said, your speech coherence after stroke has a lot to do with your capacity to remain calm and composed when speaking.
At times, it appears the words are stubbornly stuck to the tip of your tongue but don't give in to the pressure to speak hurriedly.
Otherwise, your speech may end up brazenly distorted. To lessen the communicational strain, use simple and short sentences to express yourself.
Maintaining direct eye contact with the other party can help you stay engaged while speaking. This also enhances your focus on the chat.
If you have aphasia, ensure that background noise is eliminated or reduced to the barest minimum to improve the clarity of the sound signals from the convo.
Of course, you can deploy visual clues when speaking. Making hand gestures to better transmit your message is allowed.
And if you don't mind, you can write your message to the other party as you gradually improve your communication.
To accelerate your speech formation and comprehension, you could consider reciting nursery rhymes or simply reciting your favorite celebrities' names.
You can also watch the news and try to imitate the presentation skills of the broadcaster. Yes, practice doesn't hurt.
Can the other party in the conversation help?
When it comes to recovering your communicational skills after a stroke, it takes two to tango. The other party – family and friends - contributes significantly to the efficiency of a stroke survivor's verbal expression.
First is the pressure they put on the individual (who had the stroke) when he/she speaks. It is crucial not to discount their intelligence because of the stroke attack. Commonly, it is their communication skills – not their cognitive capacity – that are impaired.
Be patient enough to allow the recovering patient to finish their sentences. Jumping in abruptly in on them midway or finishing their sentences for them is a terrible no-no.
Given that their comprehension capacity may not be as excellent as it used to be (before the stroke), ensure you are conveying your message to them as succinctly as possible. Avoid convoluted sentences and lean more towards short and quick sentences.
Don't be in a hurry when you speak to them, and don't pressure them to grasp your sentences as speedily as you spurt them out.
Remember that an individual recovering from a stroke needs as much concentrated focus on an activity to be efficient. They may not be the best at multi-tasking. Therefore, when you notice this individual is engaged in another activity, strive not to talk to them.
If you notice them disinterested in what you are saying, kindly stop. Otherwise, you may inadvertently overwhelm them with pressure.
Conclusively, recovering your communicational skills after a stroke will not happen overnight. Don't expect to spit out your favorite rap verses too soon, dear.
Yes, there may be relapses along the way, and you – and your loved ones – must be patient enough to let recovery takes its full course.
