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JavierModeratorHere’s the link to the SpeechMasters Club (anyway, you can find it if you click on the “Community” Section and then go to “SpeechMasters Club”): https://worldstopstuttering.org/speech-club/
About your bad days…. I just want to remind you the words of Dr. Frank S. Caprio, that are mentioned at the beginning of Lee’s books:
“Most of us go through life
knowing only half of ourselves…
So, we use only half of our abilities…
We suffer –
because we are strangers to ourselves.”“We have free choice:
to accept or reject thoughts.
Nothing compels us to think anything
except our own desires.Use your mental switch
to dictate your thoughts…
Believe that you can improve
and you will.”Frank S. Caprio, M.D.
Helping Yourself with Psychiatry
Prentice Hall, 1957 et seqJavierModeratorthe idea is that every week you have to experience improvements in your speech. If this is the case, you’ll end up achieving your goal. In my case, it took me 8 months more or less. But I have coached people who did this in a bit more than one month.
The way I see it, as long as you are improving every week, you’re on the right path. Continue working on your speech, practicing and using the Crutches, doing mind training treatments every day and being a Speech Cop.
One last thing… Have you considered joining us at the SpeechMasters Club meetings. You will have the chance to meet us, other PWS/PWSS, and we all learn about improving our speech. I strongly recommend it to everybody who shares this goal.JavierModeratorHi Ahmed,
from the information that you are giving me, I feel that the problem is more related to mind training and being a Speech Cop:
1) Are you doing daily Auto-suggestion or Self-hypnosis treatments?
2) Speech Cop: if your speech has worsened, my guess is that you are not being a Speech Cop. Are you using the Crutches while speaking? If you are stuttering, it means you are forcing your words instead of pausing (1000-1, 1000-2) and using a Crutch. Remember that we always the choice of using a Crutch instead of forcing words. When we force words it is because we consciously and/or subconsciously allow this to happen. Stuttering is a habit that we have acquired many years ago, so it is not easy to be a Speech Cop and do something different.Regarding the reading aloud, I suggest you to read all kinds of texts, at least that’s what I do: novels, newspaper articles, all the emails and documents I normally read at work, Whatsapp messages, Instagram, even this message that I’m currently writing to you, etc. If you don’t want to disturb the people around you, you can read these texts in a whisper, your mind will hear you just as well as if you were reading in your regular voice. Try to read aloud in a passionate way always.
You also said that you are using all the Crutches well…. Maybe you’re right, but maybe not. Don’t get me wrong… A lot of the people I coach think that they are using them correctly and when I drill them, they are actually using them incorrectly. I suggest you to go to the Video section of this website and search “Crutches drill”, and compare the way you do it with the way the coach does them. And even better, you can ask to be coached by one of us, this way we will be able to check what you’re doing right and what can be improved.
Have a great day!
JavierModeratorHi Mark!
I’m glad you asked this. Many people fear specific letters, but that is just fear. We can link words beginning with any letter. If some letters are harder for you, it is because you are hesitating, so you are “interrupting” the word linkage. Word linkage works if we don’t leave any spaces between syllables and words, because there won’t be any space for stutters. This will only work if we focus 100% on linking our words and not hesitating while speaking.So, my advice is:
1) If the feared word is at the beginning of a sentence, or after a full stop/pause, begin with any of the Crutches 1-8.
2) If the feared word is in the middle of the sentence, using word linkage is a good option (Crutch 10), but any of Crutches 7-12 should do the job.
3) Even if this feared word is at the middle of the sentence, you can insert a pause (2 seconds) before that word, and then say the feared word holding the tone. This Crutch works great and it is helping a lot of PWS. I strongly recommend you to go to the videos of the coaching sessions and simply search for “holding the tone”. You’ll find plenty of videos explaining and showing how to do it.
I hope this has been helpful.
JavierModeratorI fully agree with you! As long as we focus on speaking that way the whole time, we won’t have problems. The difficult part is not accelerating and forgetting about the pauses, etc.
JavierModeratorHi Charley,
thanks for your comments. I must say that I’ve heard you speak on the last 2 SMC meetings, and I must say that you spoke pretty good. Honestly, if I hadn’t known about your speech problems, I would have never guessed that, so congratulations! Keep on working on your speech and you’ll see that week after week, these fears will get weaker and weaker, and less and less frequent. After a while, you will realise that you might get one of those stutter threats once a month, or 2 months, or a year. And when they show up, they will be so weak, so insignificant, that it will be extremely easy for you to crush them.JavierModeratorHi Charley!
I know what you mean, in my job (I’m also a realtor), I deal with strangers every day. I wrote something about this in WSSA’s blog some weeks ago, and ‘m sure it will be very helpful for you:I also speak about this quite frequently in my coaching sessions. I encourage you to watch the videos. You can filter them by tags (search for “presentations”).
If you need anything else, please do let me know!
JavierModeratorHi Charley, my advice as a coach is that when you feel under pressure, before you begin speaking, think of a Crutch, and make sure you use it. I would suggest you to pick any Crutch 7-12 as a speaking style, and use any of the Crutches 1-8 for Feared First Words. If you cooncentrate 100% on doing that, there is no chance you will stutter. Your brain will be too busy with the Crutches to think on anything else, including stuttering.
JavierModeratorToday I’ve been speaking for 3 hours, non-stop, without appearing to have a speech problem. I’ve done this mainly by not planning my words and focusing on my voice, on trying to be expressive and pasisonate. A few times I accidentally planned a few words, but the Crutches avoided this from becoming a bad speech incident.
Who would have thought that a person who’s been stuttering for most of of his life would be able to do this?JavierModeratorToday I’ve been speaking for 3 hours, non-stop, without appearing to have a speech problem. I’ve done this mainly by not planning my words and focusing on my voice, on trying to be expressive and pasisonate. A few times I accidentally planned a few words, but the Crutches avoided this from becoming a bad speech incident.
Who would have thought that a person who’s been stuttering for most of of his life would be able to do this?JavierModeratorWord linkage, synonyms are the ones I began using the most at the beginning. Now the ones I like the most are Speaking like a King and modulation
JavierModeratorSpeaking softly works great too! Since we have the phone really close to our lips, we can speak softly, the person that we’re talking to will hear us just as well. I have shown this a lot of times in my coaching sessions. The same applies to Skype/Zoom conversations, when we have a mic or a headset.
June 22, 2020 at 2:47 pm in reply to: How do you guys find the time to fit your Auto-suggestion into your schedules? #27172JavierModeratorWhat I used to do (and continue doing) is waking up half an hour earlier (I don’t really mind sleeping a bit less), and dedicate that time to give myself a Self-hypnosis treatment during the morning. The other one I do it at night. I usually fall asleep while doing it. During the day, I used to do another Auto-Suggestion Treatment whenever I had to go to the bank or to my workplace.
June 22, 2020 at 2:44 pm in reply to: Covid-19 …. Has your stuttering increased due to the confinement? #27171JavierModeratorDuring the confinement I’ve read aloud 7 books, I’ve been reading aloud a lot more!! So in general I’ve been able to work on my speech a lot more!
JavierModeratorI absolutely agree with you! The fact of being a PWS doesn’t mean that you have a breathing problem. And we should not try to control our breathe, the same way we don’t control the blinking of our eyes. It makes no sense, and when we do that, we breathe/blink in an unnatural way.
What do the rest of you guys think? Has any of your speech therapists ever asked to control your breathing while speaking? -
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