Hi Damian,
Thanks for sharing your progress with us. Making the Crutches automatic is a matter of time and practice. The more you use them, the easier and more automatic it gets.
The more feeling and passion you put in your speech, the less you’ll need the Crutches.
About speaking to large groups of people, I would recommend you to do it one step at a time. I mean, expand your comfort zones. You may now feel comfortable and relaxed speaking to groups of, let’s say, 3 people (more than that makes you feel a bit uncomfortable). Okay, to reach the goal of speaking comfortably to groups of 20+ people, we need to start working on smaller groups. Start speaking to groups of 4-5 people. Focus on the things you’ve learnt here. After speaking to groups of 4-5 people several times, you will feel as comfortable speaking to them as you do when speaking to 1 person. Now is the time to expand again your comfort zones to groups of 6-8 people, and repeat this process. Then do it again with groups of 9-12, and so on until you no longer feel pressure speaking to groups of people, no matter its size.
You can find a lot of useful tips about speech anxiety in Lee’s book, “Speech Anxiety to Public Speaking”, only available here, at WSSA.

Hello Gerald! I have already replied to this issue of yours in the introduction section of the Forum:

Helo from Philippines.

If you have any other questions, please do let us know! And please do keep us posted with your progress!

Hi Kaarina,
as you know, children are much more insecure than we, adults are. Something that can be meaningless to us can mean a lot to them.
My advice as a coach and a PWSS who started stuttering at age 6 and who has gone to speech therapy for probably 15 years or so, be careful with the SLPs. They may make your child feel more insecure about their speech, and make things even worse.

I highly recommend you to watch the videos in the link that I sent you in my previous message. The role of the parents is key, and you can learn a lot from those videos.

As a coach, I recommend to teach by example. I mean, make it a game. When talking to your son and the rest of the family, you should all talk more slowly, pronouncing everything more clearly, more passionately, so that he imitates you… make it a game!

Read aloud to your son! I’m sure you have some fun books to read to him. Make it a game. Make him repeat some of the things you read aloud to him. He has to realise that speaking is fun.

Kaarina, do send me an email to javier@westopstuttering.org and I’ll try to get you in touch with Lee Lovett.

Hi Juned!
Vowels, consonants… that’s not the problem. Hasn’t it ocurred to you that after you finally say a word, you can say it a million times immediately afterwards? Or you can say that same word if you’re alone?
The problem is fearing words, planning words, and the insecurity we feel when saying that word to someone. What will they think about my speech? Will they laugh at me for stuttering? And so on.

The truth is, nobody cares about your speech and/or has time to care about it. People have things to do, like study, work, pay bills, take care of themselves and their families, they have their own problems. Do you think your speech is in their top priorities? Not even close. Even if you have the worst block in ages when saying a word, that person will have forgotten about it in 2 minutes.

I’m saying this to help you realise that you need to stop being sooooo worried about your speech and other people’s opinions. They don’t matter. Your opinion about yourself is what matters. You need to work on having a good opinion about yourself, and the way to do it is to give your best at everything you do (no matter how mundane it may be) and be as loving as you can be. This includes giving your best at improving your speech and achieving the PWSS status, obviously.

One thing you need to learn is to use Crutches properly. By this I mean that when you use a Crutch, you put all your attention and determination on the Crutch, and not on the word. Again, words are irrelevant. How we say them is what matters. For example, if we’re speaking in a soft voice, we put all our attention (100%; 90% is not ALL our attention) on keeping the voice in that register. Period. Another example: if we are using Crutch 4 and then linking the rest of the words, we make sure we start with a sound-launch and then we link it to the next words. So you have to make sure you link everything, as if those words and the sound launch were one single individual long word. You must leave no “spaces”, no matter how short they may be. This requires a lot of attention, especially at the beginning, so you may need to practice it several times, especially in low pressure situations and gradually climb up the ladder to higher ones, expanding comfort zones.

Watch some of our recordings of coaching sessions (https://worldstopstuttering.org/videos/) and use the search filters on the left to find the most suitable ones for your case. You may want to use the video tag “crutches overview” or “emergency speech plan”, for example.

You may also consider purchasing coaching sessions with one of us, Certified Speech Coaches, to help you in this journey to fluency and loving to speak in all venues.

Hi Rob. Welcome to WSSA! We all have our favourite Crutches. Having said that, linking is how fluent people speak. It is the opposite to choppy or halting speech. Some people may confuse linking with elongating syllables. Maybe that’s what you’re doing, I can’t tell without listening to you.
Maybe attending to our Crutch Practice Group sessions may help you, as you will hear other people using this Crutch, among others. And, of course, private coaching may be the most helpful.

Hello Kara,
you can join our Crutch Practice Group meetings by going to the “Community” section of our website, and then clicking on “Crutch Practice Groups”. Over there you should be able to see the complete list of weekly crutch practice group meetings and the Zoom link.

Hello Kim!
I’m glad you asked. You’re doing it the wrong way.
The way you should say the affirmations is repeating the first affirmation at least 20 times. Then, repeating the second affirmation at least 20 times. And so on until yo finish with your list of affirmations.
While repeating them, visualize yourself speaking calmly, confidently, enjoying it, in all kinds of situations.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Javier

I’m glad you’re finding the videos of coaching sessions useful. The advice that we give one student may well help you too.
I look forward to seeing you in one of my Crutch Practice sessions and in SAM.

Javier