I’m Noah, a 26-year-old singer-songwriter from Switzerland. Ever since I learned how to talk (before I was 12 months old), I’ve always been fascinated with language and all of the wonderful things you can do with it. To this day, I’m a big fan of metaphors, figures of speech and wordplay in general. You could definitely say that the way I express myself with language has always been very important and dear to me. So, in a spell of cosmic irony, between the age of 3 and 4, stuttering came creeping in and soon grew taller and taller. I noticed it immediately and on my own initiative tried out different strategies like talking like robot or skipping certain letters. Unfortunately – while being creative – my childlike strategies did not work. Over time, the phases where I was fluent shrunk as the phases where I was stuttering grew until it was apparent to everyone upon meeting them that I had a speech disability.
As kids can be cruel and often latch on to differences, this of course made me an easy target for bullying. Unfortunately, and shockingly, from primary school up to high school level, I was also over and over faced with teachers who lacked basic understanding of stuttering and empathy for that matter, which led to countless situations where I had to stand up for myself and fight for my right to be treated fairly.
Over the years, I basically tried everything there was to try in regards to getting rid of this severely limiting issue. I started off with traditional medicine practices and when I’d exhausted all of those, I went to the more alternative ones. The latter definitely helped more – soon I had no more allergies and was as healthy as could be… but the stuttering still persisted. Over the years, I got more and more familiar with that alternative world and discovered meditation through those means, which I still utilize to this day whenever needed. Later, when I was 14, I discovered systemic constellation work, which by far outweighed every method I had tried prior in terms of how much it helped me. It helped me heal from a lot of the trauma that my experiences with stuttering had caused and showed me new and different perspectives to a lot of things. To this day, I still do systemic constellation work regularly as it continues to greatly assist me in working on myself.
I also tried numerous stuttering programs where I was tasked to do breathing exercises multiple hours a day (an almost impossible task for my then 10-year-old self) and was taught to manipulate my speech to follow a strict rhythm, which made my speech sound monotone, robotic and lifeless. These methods were to be used indefinitely – there was no “end goal” or “cure” in sight in terms of what could be seen as true fluency. I did not stick with these methods as the aforementioned loss of my natural speech flow was a price, I was not willing to pay. My occasional moments of fluency where I was able to express myself exactly in the way I wanted to were of fundamental importance to me. They, together with music, kept me hanging on and truly saved my life. They showed me that the potential for fluency was still there inside of me – alive and well. All I needed was a path to get to it, a way to access it when needed, anywhere, anytime.
In those years of countless therapies, every birthday wish, every Christmas wish, every new year’s resolution I dedicated to the cause of stuttering – the one omnipresent issue in my life that made every other problem I had seem utterly trivial and insignificant in comparison. After a majority of my life trying to get rid of my stutter, I tried the path of acceptance. At 21, having just finished high school, needing to get an internship as a prerequisite for college, where I planned to study social work, I started my first job in a workshop for people with disabilities. With this decision, I threw myself in at the deep end. From the very first moment I started working there, for the first time in my life, I owned my stutter. By being as direct and open with it as I could be, I took back the power over it and controlled the conversation around it. I remember vividly the collective sigh of relief in that room on my first day of work introducing myself to the team, as all of the tension vanished the instant, I owned my stutter and communicated to everyone that it was not a taboo topic and was okay to talk and ask questions about. This, in turn, also relieved a ton of tension for me which improved my speech a lot. In the rest of the internship, I was constantly forced to extend my comfort zone since most of my work involved talking and I also had to occasionally answer the oh-so-dreaded phone call. This year of internship had an extremely positive influence on my confidence because I was able to prove to myself that I was still able to do a great job in a field that involved a lot of talking, in spite of stuttering.
After this internship, fueled by its positive experiences, I continued on that path of openness and transparency into my subsequent experiences on The Voice of Germany and college where I studied social work. In that time, the relentless iron grasp stuttering had had over my mind all these years softened more and more, even though I still consistently struggled with my speech and had bad incidents regularly. Still, overall, my speech was improving quite consistently, especially in low pressure situations, where I was often almost completely fluent. My confidence and mental health were at an all-time high, in large part thanks to the systemic work I’d been consistently doing for years.
In early 2024, for some reason unbeknownst to me, my stuttering started to worsen again – at an alarming rate. All of a sudden, I often couldn’t get a word or even a syllable out, even at home when talking to my mom with zero pressure. In that time, I stuttered on up to 85% of my words, regularly being severely blocked, trying to push my words out letter by letter until my lungs were completely empty, physically forcing my body to gasp for air. This was accompanied by severe facial and full-body contortions. My speech was as bad it gets – I had hit rock bottom. Still, even in this very severe phase, I had moments of fluency that now stood out even more by contrast.
One of those days, I was talking to my mom and kept getting stuck all the time with a lot of tension. I had my guitar in my hand (as I often do) and had just figured out some cool chord progression. So, I took out my phone and told her, already completely fluently and nonchalantly, as if I’d never stuttered a day in my life, “hold on, I gotta record something real quick”. I then proceeded to talk into my phone some details about the chord progression, where to put which finger etc. – all without a single hint of stuttering and in very fast tempo. I, of course, didn’t consciously focus on the fluency of my words in that moment (otherwise it probably wouldn’t have worked…) but my mom pointed out the absurdity of the situation afterwards and I agreed.
Because of that experience, for the first time in many years, I googled the subject of stuttering and stumbled on the stuttering community on Reddit, r/stuttering, where I made a post describing this absurd experience. In that thread I mentioned all of the odd situations that I was fluent in, as in singing, talking to myself, reading aloud, recording voice messages etc. I ended my post with the following sentence: “With the situation as it is, I keep on holding on to hope that someday I’m going to find a way to make use of all these absurd “loopholes” that work and bridge them together to trick my brain into fluency.”
– I never would’ve thought that that way would be just around the corner. Because, soon after I’d made my post, I received a message from someone who recommended me a book called “How To Stop Stuttering And Love Speaking” by Lee Lovett. I now know that this “someone” was our very own Danny.
I was intrigued because of the book’s focus on neuroplasticity and bought the book on a whim. After a few pages I was already hooked and the more I read, the bigger my smile and the more radiant my hope grew. It confirmed the belief that I’d been holding on to for 23 years now that stuttering can indeed be cured (i. e. made undetectable for listeners). To me almost miraculously, after only 3-5 days after I’d started reading the book, I was already 95% fluent when talking to my mom and about 70% fluent when talking to other relatives. It even worked so well, that, when I met a person one week after starting the book and talked to her pretty extensively, she did not clock my speech as stuttering. This was an incredible experience since every single person I’d ever met since the age of 3-4 had known about my stuttering pretty instantly. This experience reinforced my decision to give this book a shot and I basically devoured it in about two weeks. I followed the books instructions, reading it aloud and incorporating mind training into my daily life.
Soon after finishing the book, I joined WSSA and have greatly benefited from the coaching sessions, group practice sessions and SAM meetings that keep greatly assisting me in my journey to fluency.
Still, it has to be noted, that it was no walk in the park after that by any stretch of the imagination. After all, I still had to put in the work. I had countless of bad incidents, often leading to a negative spiral of hypercritical over-analysis accompanied by a dash of negative self-talk and a couple sprinkles of doubt. As Coach Lee often said, I “fell off the wagon” over and over. But I got up. I kept on trying. Over and over again, I picked myself up, dusted myself off and got back on the horse to continue my journey towards fluency. Eventually, I managed to stop this negative spiral from occurring by drowning it out with consistent mind training even right after a bad incident had occurred and outright refusing to give bad incidents the time of day.
In addition to that, I faced my inner saboteurs that were still holding on to stuttering as if their life depended on it – because that indeed was what they believed. I had been stuttering for so long, that I was unable to remember how it felt, when I was freely expressing myself at 3 years old, passionately retelling my then favorite movie, Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to my mom. In all of my memories, stuttering had always been there – it was a constant in my life. This is why some inner parts of myself embedded it into my identity, despite it being my main cause of grief and frustration and my arch nemesis. After realizing this wrong belief, I started working through it day after day with mind training and systemic work. I reconnected with my 3-year-old self. This little guy didn’t hold back. He spoke his mind, opening his mouth before starting to think. He didn’t spend a single second thinking about his speech. Because why would he? He knew that his brain would take care of that for him just fine. I could feel something big was starting to change. It felt like the last missing puzzle piece I had been searching for frantically, turning the whole house upside down, had finally been found. It had been deeply stowed away in my pocket the whole time.
This, in combination with committing to using my speech plan even when not needed allowed me to finally break the cycle. I now have all of the tools required to remain fluent and will keep working on my speech until I’ve dissolved this nonsensical stuttering habit once and for all. Stuttering has no power over me anymore. I have successfully taken back control.
I’m incredibly thankful to Coach Lee for writing his incredible book and for devoting his time to coach me and countless other PWS, many of them who are now PWSS. My utmost appreciation and thankfulness also goes out to Prathusha. Our coaching sessions helped me tremendously and played a huge part in my process of beating this nonsensical habit. Last but not least, my thanks also goes out to all of the amazing other people of the WSSA community for the time, devotion and kindness they’ve poured into the practice sessions, midnight thought exchanges and 1-on-1 phone calls. From the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU.
If I can do this, you can too. Believe you can improve and you will.
April 2025