Hi, my name is Oliver and I’m from Norway. My first language is Norwegian. I started to stutter around the age of 5 to 70% of the words and I always feared speaking to group and authority figures. I work as a Psychiatry nurse hence I had to talk to my patients and introduce myself to every new patient. I dreaded saying my name ‘Oliver’ and I stuttered every time I said it. Furthermore, I had hard time speaking over phone and I found it harder during patient hand over where I had to update my patients information to other colleagues.
I was determined to find a solution and started searching for ways to attack stuttering and luckily I found coach Lee’s 3rd edition – Stuttering and anxiety self cures book. The moment I started reading the book, I knew that I was going to beat stuttering because it was very practical and more importantly it was based on neuroscience and neuroplasticity which encouraged me to move forward with it. The crutches helped me a lot but at times. I joined World Stop Stuttering Association and began accessing its helpful content, and I decided to take coaching lessons from WSSA’s Coach Prathusha.
Coach Prathusha helped me in understand the crutches which made me realize that the way I was using crutch 9 was only 10 to 20% of the crutch and that I need to exaggerate the crutch more when I speak. She demonstrated and drilled me on all the crutches which helped me in using the crutches better. I had lot of negative thinking regarding stuttering and I often plan words, hence coach Prathusha suggested that I focus on the crutches while I speak, which distracted the mind from planning words because a person’s mind can only think one thing at a time, therefore I focused more on how to speak using a crutch rather than what to speak (which results in word planning).
I haven’t had a “bad incident” (clearly appearing to be a stutterer) in ___ months. I still have fears and some labored speech, but I seldom plan words and I’m working hard on my speech and trying to use the crutches all the time. If you want to hear and see me speaking, go here: https://vimeo.com/814241236/4bb216391c.
I also have been helped a lot by WSSA’s crutch practice sessions which is absolutely a supportive and safe environment to practice my speech with others. WSSA offers a wholistic programme because once a PWS becomes a PWSS, then they work on stage 2 which is loving to speak in all situations, then they move forward with tweaking the positive affirmations to attack other problematic aspects of their life like anger, depression etc., which improves life. So, I highly recommend Lee’s stuttering books and WSSA’s incredible program for stutterers out there because it’s all one needs to stop stuttering.
Oliver, Norway, June 2023