It is the mission of the World Stop Stuttering Association (WSSA) to eliminate stuttering and all speech anxieties for all who desire change. The principals of WSSA are EX-stutterers who converted from PWS to PWSS using disruptive methods created by its President, Lee Lovett.
At WSSA, we do not advocate accepting stuttering. We advocate stopping it, learning to love to speak, and applying mind-training to improve speech and all aspects of our lives.
It is obviously not “wrong” to stutter; nor does it make any of us “inferior” or “less than” others as human beings. However, for most, it is a serious burden, something which often prevents PWS from joining the fluent world, from jobs that they wanted and could have done well if fluent, from being with the partner of their choice or any partner at all, and from becoming our best. And improving the quality of our lives. We support giving PWS the option of fluency and devote ourselves to helping PWS achieve it.
WSSA is comprised primarily of EX-stutterers, PWS who used The Lovett Method to stop stuttering and to teach themselves to love to speak and to learn to capitalize on the mind’s neuroplasticity and begin the life-long process of striving to dictate one’s thoughts as much as possible.
To help PWS become PWSS, we use The Lovett Method, which is a disruptive methodology that is based on using the mind’s neuroplasticity to replace the habit of stuttering with the habit of fluency. This process has enabled hundreds to stop stuttering and teach themselves to love to speak.
To unlearn the engrained stuttering-habit, we show the PWS ways to hear fluency and not hear dysfluency from their lips long enough to break the stutter-habit. We use a three-pronged approach to accomplish this. We teach PWS to read aloud with maximum feeling, which helps train the mind to focus on the message, while hearing a great deal of fluency from the PWS’ own lips. We concurrently help PWS learn basic mind-training methods (auto suggestion and layman-levels of self-hypnosis). Finally, to enable the PWS to avoid hearing constant dysfluency, we help them learn methods/strategies/tools, which we call “Crutches” (as they are temporary, just like the crutches one uses to avoid walking on a broken leg while it heals).
The proof is in the pudding, so goes the adage. Coach Lee has devoted some 6,000 hours of free coaching to hundreds of PWS to help them stop stuttering, as evidenced by nearly 200 Stop Stuttering Stories posted online. More Stop Stuttering Stories are added every month by Lee and WSSA’s Certified Speech Coaches, all ex-stutterers whom Lee trained to coach for WSSA.
Watch some of our 1,500+ coaching videos and observe the process as it unfolds. Come to one of our Speech Club Meetings, where EX-stutterer and PWS meet, hear their stories, ask and answer questions.
Stuttering professionals say that stuttering cannot be stopped. Why? After communicating with over 1,000 stutterers, we have learned that approximately 90% of speech professionals never stuttered and the other 10% still stutter. They do not understand the problem, much less the solution. You wouldn’t take golf lessons from someone who has never been on a golf course or from one who shot 50 strokes over par.
WSSA offers the only such publicly displayed body of proofs in the history of stuttering (which is still viewed by many as “an incurable disorder”). These proofs (written in the heart-wrenching words of the PWS and many supported by videos, which Lee began adding at the request of his students) demonstrate that stuttering and related speech anxieties can be stopped – by those who use The Lovett Method, which is the basis of WSSA’s self-guided program to eliminate stuttering and speech anxiety while elevating lives through mind-training.
So, we encourage you to read and watch them, along with some of our 1,500+ coaching videos and observe the process as it unfolds. Come to one of our Speech Club Meetings, where EX-stutterer and PWS meet, hear Stop Stuttering Stories, and ask and answer questions on point.
We work with PWS with all levels of severity; from those that have relatively mild speech anxieties to those that can barely speak one word. Our goals are the same for everyone.
WSSA helps PWS by providing tools and services that work. Your membership will include:
While stuttering is at the top of our list, our methods address “the whole person”. That is, we do not confine our healing approach only to speech disabilities, such as stuttering. We focus on attitudes and beliefs that foster fluid speech but which also mitigate our other human problems. The more that we reduce the latter, the more manageable our speech issues become.
Some of the key issues that underlie and foment stuttering and many other mental issues include: inferiority complexes, excessive concerns with the opinions of others, an obsession to be perfect, a fear of failure, financially and socially, concerns with general health, loneliness, and a host of negative emotions (such as boredom, depression, anger, anxiety, jealousy, hatred, greed, laziness, insomnia, etc.)
We do address these issues in our coaching sessions.
All humans suffer inferiority complexes. With PWS, they manifest themselves in speech issues. We grade ourselves too harshly. We should only grade our level of effort. If we exert our 100% best effort at whatever we do, in nearly all cases, we will achieve our reasonable goals. Our best efforts will generally place us above average in most things, because most do not give their best efforts. When we do our best, our results will not be “inferior”. There is, therefore, no reason to accept feelings of inferiority.
Most of us are far too concerned with the opinions of others. There is only one opinion of us that, in the long run, truly matters: our opinion of ourselves. We can guarantee having a good opinion of ourselves if we do three things: (1) our best at whatever we choose to do, (2) be as loving as we can to all humans and domestic animals, (3) practice daily mind-training to shape and dictate our thoughts.
Most stutterers suffer from perfectionism. Trying to be perfect has some positive effects; we try very hard to do things well. However, no person or thing on this planet will ever be “perfect”; so, striving to be perfect guarantees feelings of failure, in speech and everything else. The goal should never be to be perfect. It needs to be our best. Our best will almost always enable us to achieve our reasonable goals, and, thus, to hold our heads high.
Too many of fear that we will fail socially or financially. “What you fear shall come upon you,” says the Christian Bible. Fears tend to become self-fulfilling prophesies. The more we fear something, the more it is on our mind. It has been said, “Thinking makes it so.” The power of thought is enormous and far greater than mankind now realizes. Fear itself needs to be battled in our daily mind-training sessions. In addition, if and when we do our best, we will NOT fail. So few really continuously do their best that, those who do, stand out and excel. This includes excelling in social relations and financially.
The Key Tenets We Teach: Life is a solo journey. Your life is largely in your mind, and your mind is basically within your control. How can you make yourself a success in your mind and gain control of your happiness?
Begin by realizing that life is not You vs. The World; it is You vs. You. IF we can master ourselves, we win the game of life. You/I/we do not need to the best at anything; we only need to be the best that we can be. Our best, in most cases, will be sufficient to achieve our reasonable goals.
Achieving our reasonable goals, however, by itself, is not sufficient to assure a happy life. Again, we believe that our happiness requires three things: (1) Our best efforts at what we do. (2) A kind and loving attitude towards others. (3) Daily mind training to program our minds and keep them FULL of positives, as “Nothing can enter a mind already full,” as said a great metaphysician.
As the emerging acceptance of neuroplasticity is teaching us, our minds (what we allow them and train them to think) is having direct bearing on health, inorganic and organic. Our program promotes positive thinking at all levels, including as it relates to health.
Many stutterers suffer loneliness and for good reason. They cannot communicate well or sometimes at all with those in the fluent world, which comprises 99% of the population. By stopping stuttering, we are able to live in the fluent world, thus eliminating the primary cause of our loneliness.
With daily mind-training, we work to control the host of common human issues (boredom, depression, anxiety, anger, jealousy, hatred, greed, laziness, insomnia, etc.).
The foregoing offers a nutshell view of our holistic program. To the extent that students embrace it, their lives and their speech are elevated enormously. For more on this topic, read Lee’s “How to Stop Stuttering & Love Speaking” and watch WSSA’s coaching-videos.
WSSA and its principals have performed more documented research on stuttering than any individual or group in history. In the past six years alone, we have done over 6,000 individual sessions with PWS, logged over 1,500 videos of these session and exchanged thousands of demonstrative emails with PWS, the creation of a 700+ page book explaining methods that have been proved to work. Our team and students include SLP’s, M.D.’s, PhD’s, university professors, and, most importantly, people who stopped stuttering (PWSS). Our team continues in-depth research of stuttering cases seven days a week. Some of our most interesting and exciting findings include data regarding the long-accepted and misguided, allegedly “scientific” conclusion that stuttering is “incurable” and must be “accepted”. Some of our probative and encouraging findings follow.
There is a worldwide medical crisis regarding stuttering and its kin, severe speech anxiety (which causes many to be silent in many situations)!
How many speech sufferers are there? An estimated 70 million stutter and likely hundreds of millions more are semi-mutes, who go through their lives being silent in many situations to avoid perceived speech-risks. Stutterers and semi-mutes are hereinafter referred to jointly as PWS or speech sufferers.
What is the long-held, erroneous dogma about stuttering? Stuttering (and its cousin, muteness) are “incurable” and must be “accepted”. The scientific fact is that there is no meaningful body of evidence to support “incurability” and/or “acceptance”, and, in the past decade, a mountain of scientific and contrary evidence has emerged to prove that stuttering and semi-muteness can be halted and replaced by loving to speak.
Before we examine the scientific evidence, let us first consider the world “science”. Often said to be the wisest philosopher in recorded history, Socrates taught us to begin all discussions by defining the key term(s). Most laymen mistakenly think of science as something that comes from academia, especially those related to “the sciences” (chemistry, physics, biology, botonny, etc.) That is the wrong definition of “science”. The word ‘science’ is actually defined as “the intellectual and practical study of the systematic structure and behavior” of whatever is being studied. In simple English, science means “systematic study” of a subject.
Neither medical degrees nor academic credentials are necessarily required. Experts are created by systematic study. The more one studies, the more expert he/she becomes. Rational interrogation and convincing evidence are the sine qua non (pre-requisites) of scientific conclusions. Scientific findings are created by examination and experimentation. Science is trial and error. Science is learned by experimenting. Experts and science are the product of studying things.
What “science” is advanced to support “incurability” and/or acceptance? Very little. Only pockets of individual speech language pathologists, psychologists, academics and others trained in some areas related to speech (hereinafter “speech professionals”) have provided therapy, in private sessions or clinics, which in nearly all cases has not enabled the PWS to stop stuttering. As result, they conclude, stuttering is “incurable” and must be “accepted”. As we have learned from communicating with over 1,000 PWS, the huge flaw in these “studies” or data is that over 90% of the speech professionals never stuttered and the remaining 10% still stutter. These people can never understand stuttering, much less help others beat it. Would you take golf lessons/advice from someone who had never been on a golf course or who shot twice par? If 1,000 speech professionals who never stuttered or still do each treat ten PWS and fail to help the PWS stop stuttering, 10,000 failed cases are created, but those cases prove only that those who cannot understand the problem cannot help solve it. As a result, the existing body of “evidence” to support stuttering’s “incurability” and “acceptance”, can and should be discarded.
Conversely, what data support the opposite conclusion; that is, that stuttering can be stopped and does not need to be accepted by most stutterers?
First, as our communications with innumerable PWS suggests and observed by some astute speech professionals, millions of very mild stutterers stop their stuttering every year. How do they accomplish this? By remaining silent when needed to avoid appearing speech disabled. This will not work for more than the mildest stutterers. While some avoidance is generally necessary to retrain the mind to over-write the stutter-habit with the fluency-habit, we do not recommend avoidance as a solution. Regardless, the mildest stutterers often do gradually learn to “forget to stutter” by simply remaining silent to avoid a humiliating stutter-incident. Again, this will NOT work except for the very mildest cases. In any event, millions of very mild stutterers simply outgrow stuttering. This fact demonstrates that the mind can be trained to unlearn the habit of stuttering. Our methods provide the tools for nearly all to do so.
Second, in addition to the millions who simply “outgrow” stuttering, all levels of stuttering can be stopped by nearly all stutterers. There is now “science” to prove that fact.
“What is the ‘science’ of our methods?”
As noted earlier, “science” is defined as the “systematic structure and behavior” of the subject, here stuttering. no other individual or group in academia or elsewhere has ever “studied [or continues to daily study] the systematic structure and behavior” of stuttering at anywhere near the level or depth that has our community of EX-stutterers. Six years ago, we began counseling PWS, one-by-one, for free. These sessions were done to help PWS, not to build a record to prove anything, but they came to prove a great deal worth recording, celebrating and broadcasting. Over time, we gradually realized that our success with PWS should be documented. So, we began recording coaching sessions and posting the results of our gratuitous efforts. All of these efforts were “studies” of various types.
Our studies have included (1) Over 6,000 individual coaching sessions in the past six years alone (nearly 2,000 of which are documented in videos) and (2) the arduous writing of four books (exceeding 1,700 pages in the aggregate), so far, the latest book being 733 pages, all of which detail what we have done, how we have done it, and what the results have been.
As noted at the opening of this commentary, our mano-a-mano, one-on-one sessions with PWS, videos, thousands of emails, etc. have provided massive tangible evidence to support our inescapable conclusions, and more evidence is added every day. The results of these studies/research is evidenced by many things, including: (1) the creation of a Stutterers’ Speech Hall of Fame, where we have posted almost 200 Stop Stuttering Stories, in which EX-stutterers explain the stuttering and how they beat it; (2) those SS done since mid-2018, also include videos of the person who stopped stuttering (PWSS) verbalizing their stories, and some of the more recent ones also include videos of them in their stuttering days; (3) the creation of a massive website offering services and programs to help PWS, including hundreds of videos explaining our methods and giving valuable “tips” to PWS; (4) the creation of a speech club for stutterers (Speech Anxiety Masters/SAM) that meets weekly and which is typically attended by dozens of PWS worldwide, (5) blogs, forums, email updates with the latest suggestions to help PWS, and (6) creating The World Stop Stuttering Association/WSSA, a 501c3-IRS-approved charity to help PWS, which stands as the world’s ONLY community of EX-stutterers and those fast becoming same.
Conclusion: The only significant “science” that exists on stuttering has been provided by our community of EX-stutterers, and it demonstrates that nearly all PWS can stop stuttering. While some PWS will not work at our program, over 90% of those who have worked our program have stopped stuttering, and less than 5% have later revealed relapses. The exact numbers are not important, as there is a preponderance of successful results. This is a crisis that needs immediate attention. Let’s stop brain-washing millions of PWS to believe that stuttering is “incurable” and must be “accepted”, and begin helping them to stop stuttering immediately.
