Neuroscience, at its most basic, is a study of the nervous system with a primary focus on the brain. Neuroscience has prompted medical experts to change their view that the brain is hard-wired at birth, at age 5, age 28, or ever, even into the nineties. In the last 20 years, numerous books have emerged on this topic, with Dr. Norman Doidge’s “The Brain That Can Change Itself” being a leading best seller on the topic. Neuroscience makes clear that the most repeated thought becomes the dominant thought, and the dominant thought becomes our reality, who we are. In simplest terms, neuroscience now tells us that the human brain is much like plastic, and can be re-shaped, remolded, retrained, and re-programmed as long as we live.
The late Frank S. Caprio, M.D., psychiatrist author of “Helping Yourself with Psychiatry,” told us:
“We have free choice to accept or reject thoughts. Nothing compels us to think anything except our own desires. Use your mental switch and dictate your thoughts. Believe that you can improve, and you will.”
Stuttering, in all its myriad forms, is little more than a bad habit, a habit of hesitating before speaking and thinking, fearing and attempting to force words (what we call “the stutter-habit-chain”). This habit is extremely hard to break and has caused stuttering to be viewed as an “incurable disorder” that should be “accepted”. (Unfortunately, 90% of speech therapists never stuttered and, thus, can’t understand the problem. The other 10% still stutter and can’t fathom the solutions.) WSSA’s hundreds of PWS have proved that most can stop stuttering. Neuroscience is the key; it teaches us that the human mind can be reprogrammed and that bad habits will die through disuse, and new habits, habits of fluency can replace the stutter-habit-chain.
WSSA’s Neuroscience Method of stopping stuttering and learning to love to speak in all situations was developed by Lee Lovett, an ex-stutterer, who stopped his stuttering by age 30 and overcame fears of speaking and learned to love speak in all situations by age 40. Lee used a combination of (1) mind-training methods (including auto suggestion and self-hypnosis), (2) massive talking in his stutter-free-zones (which most PWS have) and listening to recordings of himself when fluent and reading aloud, and (3) using certain strategies, methods, tools to avoid appearing speech disabled. The foregoing one-two-three punch enabled him to speak fluently many hours every day, and not appear speech disabled for weeks and months at a time; thus, he gradually simply forgot to stutter. His stuttering died from disuse. He literally replaced his stutter-habit with a fluency-habit. He continued to practice his fluent speech and became a very successful public speaker in his profession. He never relapsed and has been stutter-free for forty years.
In the ensuing four decades, as a labor of love, he devoted his spare time to helping people who stutter (PWS) stop stuttering. In 2016, he released his first of eight stuttering-related books, explaining his core methods. Being long retired, he then began to coach PWS seven days a week, literally learning and improving the methods virtually every week and updating his books with better explanations. By late 2023, he had given some 8,000 private coaching sessions to PWS, all no charge, and several hundred of his students, as he calls them, had stopped their stuttering. He had trained a team of Certified Speech Coaches (all ex-stutterers) to coach other PWS.
Lee and a team of his ex-stuttering students then created an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) charity, World Stop Stuttering Assocation (WSSA) to help PWS. Lee donates all of his royalties to WSSA and funds most of its losses, and he continues to coach PWS, for free, seven days of most weeks. This is not about money for Lee. He has a simple goal, which WSSA shares: Kick stuttering off the planet.
As best we know, WSSA is the world’s only community of EX-stutterers and the only community that has posted online hundreds of text and video proofs that most PWS can stop stuttering and even learn to love to speak. As WSSA is a charity, it offers its services, programs, videos, speech clubs, hang outs, practice groups, methods, etc. for as close to no cost as it can – as of late 2023, for only 30 cents or so a day.
The Neuroscience Method of Stopping Stuttering is based on solid medical principles and is taught by those who have successfully used the methods. Yes, it is new to the world, but it promises to rid the world of nearly all stuttering in due course.
