If you are a person who stutters, and if you have a question how to stop stuttering, how to fix stuttering, how to cure stuttering...

Or how to stutter less or stutter easier, or maybe how to accept stuttering and not be ashamed or afraid of it...

Or simply how to deal with it...

I want you to look beyond those ‘how to’ questions and see what your real goal with stuttering is. What are you really trying to achieve?

That’s what defines your strategy, your actions and results.

If you think about it mathematically, aiming to get to the core, there's one key element that you're really trying to change.

Or maybe you're not actively trying to change it, but at the very least, consciously or subconsciously, you're measuring it.

It’s either your fluency or your activity.

By default, we measure fluency.

By default, that’s how we see our improvement.

However, if you have undergone speech therapy or participated in speech courses or programs for stuttering, you may have experienced temporary improvements in fluency. Nevertheless, in many cases, stuttering tends to come back eventually.

That happens not because stuttering is magical or mystical, but because by trying to improve fluency, we're not addressing the bigger parts of stuttering, which are negative feelings about stuttering, and ultimately what I call the 'refusal' when our brain, as a stubborn kid, simply refuses to play this game of speaking interaction.

If you want to learn more about stuttering cycle, and how it works, you can go and check it out below.

So, by just improving fluency we're not actually getting to those deeper layers of stuttering.
Now, let's see what happens if we start measuring not fluency but activity. When raise your hand, when you start doing new things, when you start volunteering, when you start creating speaking experiences and speaking interactions. What happens then?

You might go asking, "How do I increase my speaking activity if I stutter and I don't like it? I don't I don't want to stutter!"

Got you! As a prerequisite for becoming more active, you want to actually like it.

Becoming more active is not about forcing yourself, "Come on! Do it!" It's not about desensitising yourself to something negative. It's a new perspective, it's a new feeling where you view that activity as something positive, as something that you actually want.

The next question is, "How to like it? How to enjoy it? I don't enjoy the moment when I block!"

Sure! That's where you want to get in touch with the training speech and the tools that give you the ability to feel how speaking can be relaxing and effortless. As a person who stutters, I'm using the hand stuttering technique. That's what I teach my students. It's not a crutch, there's nothing artificial about it, you're just restoring the rhythmical structure of your natural speaking.

The most important thing about the training speech is HOW you use it. You can reap all the benefits of if when you're using it not from the place of fear, trying to hide and escape stuttering, but when you're open about it, when you embrace your new identity, when you're not ashamed of stuttering and your improvement efforts, when you're not afraid of speaking interaction. When you have nothing to hide. When you can be YOU, and speak on your terms.

"It sounds awesome," you might say, "But I don't stutter all the time. I mean... I know how to speak, I don't think I need any training speech..."

Well, I understand.

A prerequisite of turning to the training speech is dealing with your ego which is going to create a million reasons and excuses why not. But if you try to trace that internal conversation you can see that it's all about our fear of being different. It's so hard to embrace that difference.

"I don’t want to be different! I don’t want to embrace it! I just want to be fluent!"

We shift back to the fluency game, where we've been. It doesn't work.

If you manage to deal with your ego, then you can unlock speaking on your terms and truly enjoying it. And becoming more active as a result. The more active you are the more you tap into your new identity, the more you feel the effortlessness in your speaking, the more you enjoy it, the more active you become. That creates a new cycle that starts to reproduce itself.

Compared to chasing fluency, that's a real thing.

If you want to learn more about the process I use with my students, join the my free video training below.

Thank you so much for paying attention! Talk to you soon!