Hi Gábor,
sorry for my late reply. Lee sent us an email last night saying that he has just uploaded his new book on Amazon, which means that it 3-5 days it should be available there.

Hi Ocean! Welcome to WSSA!!
My name is Javier and I’m one of the Certified Speech Coaches of WSSA. I began stuttering at around age 6, and eventually my stutter became very severe (blocks on most words in ALL situations, face grimaces, etc). Finally, at the age of 29, I became a PWSS. Your case seems milder than mine, so that’s good.
In my previous job (I worked there for around 6 years) I had to do a lot of phone calls, meet clients, travel, etc. I loved that job, besides the multiple bad incidents I had every day. Everytime I got stuck on a word, it has devastating.
The thing is, you can work on your speech while doing the rest of the things you do everyday. Here are some examples:
– You can do your Auto-Suggestion Treatments while driving/going to work (or elsewhere). I still do that.
– You can read aloud everything that you read, such as emails, reports, messages, news articles, etc. If you are at work, and you don’t want to disturb others, do it in a whisper. Since I guess that you’ll have to wear a facemask at work, feel free to read aloud whispering, most people won’t notice it.
– Use the Crutches every time you speak.

Have you gone to any of our Crutch Practice Sessions? We have multiple every day. Check them here: https://worldstopstuttering.org/crutch-practice-group/
These sessions are in groups of not more than 5 people. The host is either a Coach or a PWSS, so they know the Crutches. The idea is that the attendees have the chance to learn, practice and master the Crutches in a safe and supportive environment, where everybody there has the same goal as you: master the Crutches. So nobody is going to judge you; on the contrary, they’ll try to help you as best as they can. So, try to go to as many of these sessions as you can. A lot of my students go there and they are improving a lot faster.

Another thing that you should do is to watch the video courses of “Stuttering & Anxiety Self-Cures” and “Crutch Mastery series”. The former is not a substitute of the book. It is a complement to the book, to help you understand it more easily. Here’s the link to these courses: https://worldstopstuttering.org/courses/
Since you are a busy person, in most of these video lessons you can simply listen to them, without watching, so that you can do other things at the same time. I used to listen to them while cooking, for example.

If you have a free Saturday, please do come to the SAM meetings (Saturdays at 10am NY time). You will be able to listen to the speech journey of other PWSS, learn from them, ask them questions, etc. It’s really motivational. Here’s the link: https://worldstopstuttering.org/speech-club/

And of course, coaching will help you considerably too 🙂

Feel free to ask us any questions here, and keep us posted with your progress!

Have a wonderful day!

Javier

Hi Jack! Welcome to WSSA! My name is Javier, I live in Spain and I’m a PWSS and one of the Certified Speech Coaches of WSSA. I’m glad you just signed up as a Stuttering member. Until you receive the hard copy of Lee’s book, you can start reading it from here. As a Stuttering member, you have free access to electronic copies of all of his books here.

To make the most of WSSA’s contents, I’d suggest you the following things:
– Of course, read Lee’s Stuttering & Anxiety Self-Cures. While you read its chapters, watch the corresponding video lesson of those chapters of the video course of this book: https://worldstopstuttering.org/courses/stuttering-and-speech-anxiety-self-cures/.

– Once you get to the part of the Crutches, start with this video course too: https://worldstopstuttering.org/courses/crutch-mastery-series/.

– Read the book aloud, in a passionate way.

– Once you’ve read the part of the book about the Crutches, start attending to as many Crutch Practice Group sessions as you can: https://worldstopstuttering.org/crutch-practice-group/. These sessions will help you immensely. You will be able to practice the Crutches in small groups (not more than 5 people) and learn from the rest of the attendees.

– Come to the SAM meetings, as you said. The are extremely motivating, and of course, you will learn a lot from other people’s experiences. I might not be able to be there this next Saturday, unfortunately. But I hope to see you any other week!

– Watch videos of other coaching sessions in the “Video” Section of this website: https://worldstopstuttering.org/videos. There are more than 1000 videos of coaching sessions. You will see that you have multiple filters to find the most suitable videos for you. The advice that we, coaches, give in those videos will surely be helpful for you too!

– Read the Blogs that we have written and that are meant to complement the book. https://worldstopstuttering.org/blog/

– Ask us any questions you might have, and share your progress with us too here, in the Forums.

– And finally, as a Stuttering member of WSSA, you have 3 free coaching sessions. These sessions will surely help you become a PWSS faster, but I’d recommend you first to finish reading the book, so as to avoid “wasting” time explaining you the things that are already explained in the book, and so that we can make the most of this precious time.

Work on this program as much as you can, on a daily basis, and you’ll become a PWSS. It will just be a matter of time. I’ve had students who did this in 5 weeks, others have taken months. This depends on the severity of your stutter, on how long you’ve been stuttering, and how diligently you work on it.

Feel free to ask us anything!

We’ll be looking forward to seeing you there, Tracey!

By the way, I am asking all the people I coach to watch the video of the last SAM meeting (the speaker is actually somebody from Scotland too), because, appart from the fact that the way he spoke was fantastic, the content is even better. He spoke about how he works on his speech and his daily regime. It’s really worth watching:

SpeechAnxietyMasters Meeting: June 26, 2021

Adam, it’s not so much about explaining it, it’s about finding a solution to it. I firmly belive, and so do all the people that I’ve coached, that we stutter when we plan-fear-hesitate-force a word. But in any case, let’s suppose you don’t fear words, and you have a block with a word. As soon as you see that you’re beginning to force a word, STOP IT! Immediately, stop forcing it. Take a 1-count, or a 2-count, or even a 3-count, and start again, but using a Crutch this time. But make sure you are 100% focused on using that Crutch, and nothing else.

This is fantastic, guys!!

Hi Federica! I’m Javier, and just like Leah, I’m a PWSS and one of the Certified Coaches of WSSA. I’m from Madrid, Spain, so we could even speak in Spanish if you wish 🙂

It’s great to see that you’re going to take this program seriously and start your process of becoming a PWSS.

Reading aloud, especially at the beginning, can be tedious. I admit that. When I first started this program, I must say that I didn’t like reading aloud. But I knew I had to do it. I forced myself to do it, because stopping stuttering became my nº1 priority. So I made a huge effort to read aloud every day at least 1h. Even if my throat began to ache, I kept on doing it, but whispering. Since at work you deal with a lot of reading materials, read those! Everyday, when I went to my office, I liked to read the news while I prepared myself a coffee. Well, I used to read those articles aloud (or in a whisper if I didn’t want to bother those around me). I also read aloud all my whatsapp messages, emails, etc.
I forced myself to read aloud as much as I could. I even wrote it in my agenda, as one of my tasks to do every day. The beginning is the toughest part, but the more you do it, the easier it gets, because you’ll get used to it. In the end you’ll even get to enjoy it, I’m not joking!

Force yourself too to do the mind training treatments (auto-suggestions and/or self-hypnosis) at least x2/day, once in the morning and another one before going to bed. To find the time, I woke up (and I still wake up) 20 minutes earlier, to be able to give myself one of these treatments. And I don’t regret it! It helps me so much, not only with my speech, as now my affirmations deal with other things about myself.

About the Crutches and how to use them during the day…. well, you have to try to use them as much as possible. You should know that using them is going to actually improve your speech, so why not use them 24/7?
I used to give myself challenges, such as: now, I am going to use Crutch 1 for the next 10 minutes, on random words while I speak. For the folloeing 10 minutes, the same but with Crutch 2. And so on, until you finish with the list of the Crutches.
When reading aloud, use them too. It is a great opportunity to master them. Read aloud and use one Crutch per page, on as many words as you can. This is a great “training exercise”. BTW, when reading aloud, the only 2 Crutches that you won’t be able to use are Crutches 5 and 6 (it’s not easy to use them when reading aloud).
Every time you open your mouth to say something is a great chance to use the Crutches.
The Crutches work because when you use them, and focus 100% on the Crutches, you won’t be focusing on the word, so you won’t have issues saying that word. We stutter when we think-fear-hesitate-force the word. The Crutches prevent this from happening. So the more we use them, the sooner that speaking thinking only on the Crutches will become a habit, the sooner it will become your usual way of speaking. If you get there, you’ll be able to use the Crutches automatically, without thinking. This is when you won’t ever again worry or even think about your stutter.

About the coaching, we recommend to first finish reading the book, so that we don’t need to explain the book (so you save time, and you will be able to make a better use of the coaching sessions). But of course, you can ask us to explain to you anything about the book.

Regarding the meetings on Saturdays, of course that you can come to those. They are aimed for PWS and PWSS, of course!! We hope to see you this Saturday!

About practicing the Crutches, we have created a series of group meetings to precisely practice the Crutches:

Crutch Practice Group

The idea is to meet in groups of not more than 5 people, so that all the attendees have time to work on the Crutches. I am the host of some of these meetings (Wednesdays and Fridays at 5am EDT, or 10am if you are still in the Canary Islands). So my session will start in less than 1h. It’d be great to see you there!!!

I hope I answered all your questions, if not please let me know. If you have other questions, please share them with us! Have a great day.

Hi Tracey, it is not easy to explain it verbally, it is much easier explained face to face, but I’ll give it a try anyway.
The idea behind this Crutch is that if not all PWS, then 99% of them are fluent when they sing, right? The reason is because when we sing, we are focusing on our tone, on our voice. We are not thinking about the words, we are not fearing them. So we’re fluent.
Try to sing a word or a few words. Notice that your abdomen is naturally hard when you do it? That’s what happens when we sing. Now do it again, but try remove the melody. You’ll be holding a tone while you speak. If your stomach is still hard, you’re doing it right. The idea is that if you do this and link your syllables and words (making sure you don’t interrupt the air coming out of your mouth), you’ll be fluent. But you can’t do this with many words, or you’ll run out of air and get more nervous, and the risk of getting stuck will increase. So you have to do it in short increments, or, for example, not more than 5 words or so (don’t count the words, just have that in mind).

To get a much clearer idea of what I am saying, you can watch really good videos of the coaches explaining this in our sessions. To watch this you must go to the “Videos” section of this website. Once there, on the left you’ll find a lot of filters to find the mos apropriate videos for you. There are “vide tags”, and I suggest you to use this one: “holding the tone”. If you watch any of those videos, I’m very sure that you’ll get a much clearer idea of what I’m saying.

I hope I explained myself clearly. If not, please do let me know.