Hi Amine,

I totally agree with your views and it has been very productive chatting with you.

The best example of humming or singing would be the videos of Artis from Norway, you can search for his videos in the WSSA video library. He had a severe stutter and the only crutch that helped him the most was singing and laughing. If you ask me do you have to sing permanently throughout your life ?? Definitely not, because your speech system will adjust to the crutch. If you look at Artis videos, initially was singing his speech but the more he practiced, the more he sounded natural. So, don’t worry!! The more you are going to hum through the words, the more your speech is going to sound natural. For that, you need to go through the phase called “practice” till it becomes your second nature. For now, don’t bother about what others might think of your speech while using the crutches because this is a temporary phase but worth the practice 🙂

Nice knowing you 🙂 do you attend SAM meetings ?? I would love to see you there.

Thanks,
PR

Hi Amine,

Thanks for that interesting question. It is important, what you feed the most to your mind. I cannot ask a PWS to forget a bad incident (a stuttering memory) because he might have suffered a great deal with it in his past and maybe it is still haunting him. But what I can do is make him using the crutches which helps him in converting a potential bad incident into a fluent memory. The only way to forget bad incident is by building a pile of fluent memories and this is where “Mind Training” come into play. When you say “Everyday in every way my speech grows better and better”, maybe in the starting you will not even believe what you are saying but the more you say it, the more repetitive these affirmations impacts your mind. The most repeated thought becomes your dominant thought and your dominant thought becomes your reality. The mind training takes time to take effect, that’s why it is very important to use crutches to avoid any sort of disfluency during the treatment tenure. Please read my blog in mind training https://worldstopstuttering.org/2020/08/using-auto-suggestion-treatments-to-expand-your-horizons/

Hi Jay,

I’m so proud of you mate, because I just guided you through Coach Lee’s methods and YOU are the one who put the hard work and effort that was needed!! Congratulations 🙂

Now, start expanding your comfort zone and I’m sure Coach Lee’s book on public speaking will help you and there are also video lessons on the public speaking book so you can benefit from those as well.

Way to go!!

Hi Adam,

First of all you do not block on vowels. It is just in your mind. When you are speaking using a crutch it doesn’t matter whether you are saying words starting with a vowel or a consonant because when you use a crutch you do not stutter. Under pressure “Always think of a crutch and use them more than usual, I mean I want you to deliberately exaggerate the crutch” presto the stutter vanishes. Maybe you could include this as part of your ASTs. In terms of speaking slow, I always use extreme pronunciation wherein I completely enunciate words with proper intonations just the way how Ross speaks in the television series “FRIENDS”.

I completely agree with Leah and Javie 🙂

Thanks,
PR

Hi Adam,

You are very inquisitive and I really appreciate that. So I was reading an article on stuttering and I stumbled upon this point where I read that the “Amygdala” controls the emotional part in our brain. So, basically it is where the emotion sits. Every time we are faced with a physical threat, this amygdala is stimulated as a result of which we experience shallow and rapid breathing, anxiety and the rush of adrenaline. It is really interesting when a PWS experiences the same in case of a social speaking situation. So all our lives our mind has been trained to view a speaking situation as a physical threat as a result a PWS experiences tightness in their jaws, erratic breathing and anxiety while speaking. This results in stuttering. If you ask me whether a person became a PWS when he first spoke in his childhood ? No, he would have spoken without a trace of stutter. It is during age 3-4 where this stutter develops. This can be due to an unpleasant speaking experience wherein the child’s mother scolds the child for speaking loud or the child’s father might have scolded the child for a ridiculous reason. These unpleasant memory affects the child intensely. There is something called “Engrams” where the memory exists and it captures what we see, feel, hear, touch during a specific situation. So, when someone asks this child to speak loud in future, the child will automatically relate this to the unpleasant memory that he had earlier ( in which his mother scolded him) and the engrams are responsible for this kind of memory tracing. That is why it is pinnacle to cleanse our minds through mind training.

Please feel free to ask more questions 🙂

Thanks,
PR

Hi Ali,

I’m Prathusha, one of the certified speech coaches at WSSA Inc., I’m so happy that you found the book on Amazon and obviously it is the most incredible book that is ever written on stuttering and anxiety. I don’t know how much you have read so far !! But try to understand all the crutches that Coach Lee has mentioned and also use it when you speak. This really works !! I have been a PWSS (Person Who Stopped Stuttering) for almost 4.5 years now. All I did was to practice all the 13 crutches all time even when I didn’t need one. I have practiced it so much that I no longer remember how I spoke few years back and I don’t even remember the way I stuttered. I’m completely fluent and crutches have become my style of speech now. If you have any queries please reach out to us!! And if you have trouble understanding the crutches or if you have doubts on how to use them, join WSSA Inc., as a “Stuttering plan” member and request coaching. Now we are giving 3 free coaching sessions to people who join as stuttering plan member before September 30th 2020.

In fluency,
Coach Prathusha

Hi Ken,

I completely agree with Tasneem and Javier !!

Javier inspired me to bring on some mind games while coaching the PWS. So, the mind game I use in my sessions are called “RAPID FIRE” so it goes like this !! When I ask the 1st question to the PWS, he/she must not answer it but when I ask him the 2nd question he should answer for the 1st question and when I ask him the 3rd question, he should answer for the 2nd question which I asked earlier and it goes on and on…

So, basically this game keeps their mind completely occupied because when I ask them the 2nd question they need to focus on the question that I’m asking and at the same time they need to formulate the answer for the 1st question which I asked them earlier!! So, this proves that when a mind concentrates on more than one thing it is impossible to stutter.

Stutter occurs when a person starts “PLANNING WORDS” and this game stops them from doing that 🙂