“How to stop stuttering 2010”. “How to stop stuttering 2015”. “How to stop stuttering 2020”. If you’re reading this, then chances are you can relate to my questions and my never-ending pursuit of knowledge and potential cures for stuttering. I’ve probably spent more time researching stuttering, its various causes, and techniques for overcoming it than I have for my own major. Imagine that. The amount of time it took me to get my degree pales in comparison to the amount of time and effort I have poured into stuttering over the course of nearly two decades. And yet, I always came up empty. Maybe a technique worked for a little while, but nothing was ever truly long-term or sustainable. It didn’t help that stuttering seemed so personalized; what worked for one person wouldn’t necessarily work for someone else. Truly, it felt like the most impossible of problems—a sick joke, a cruel punishment, or something else of the sort for those that dared to shine brightly.
The last time I truly shined brightly was in fifth grade, wherein I was likely 11 years old. During fifth grade, I felt like I had won at life. I was the smartest kid in my class. I was the most popular kid in my class. Everyone wanted to be my friend. My teacher loved me and nominated me for multiple academic awards. And most of all, I was effortlessly fluent. From first to fourth grade, I was enrolled in speech therapy due to my struggles with blocks and repetitions. At that time, stuttering didn’t really bother me; I was never bullied for it, and it didn’t hold me back in school, but my parents were understandably worried about it. So they started taking me to a speech therapist. My speech therapist was wonderful; I liked going to see her. We covered all the basic traditional techniques, like light contacts, elongation, belly breathing, etc. – none of which historically seem to stop stuttering for anyone permanently. Honestly, I don’t think any of those techniques worked, or at least not long term. But it didn’t matter. Eventually, once I got to fifth grade, my stuttering magically went away for the moment. At that point, I “graduated” from speech therapy; they didn’t think I needed to keep coming. And that was that.
But if the story ended there, I wouldn’t be here, nearly 13 years later, writing this essay now. While fifth grade was a great time, it wasn’t perfect. Underneath my superficial “fame” in the classroom was the growing seed of arrogance. Perhaps my stuttering went away in fifth grade because my confidence was at an all-time high, but with such excessive confidence came the idea that maybe, just maybe, I was better than everyone else. That I was better, smarter, more popular, and just superior to everyone around me. That’s a lot of “power” for someone that young, and I think eventually, it got to my head and made me mean. So I had fluency at that time, yes, but clearly, I wasn’t using it responsibly or respectfully.
And then, in perhaps an act of divine punishment, my stuttering came back in full force the following year, in sixth grade, because the methods that traditional therapists taught ended in incurability and their warnings that I needed to accept it, for life. For those of you reading this that aren’t from the U.S., fifth grade is the last year of elementary school and sixth grade is the first year of middle school. Sixth grade meant I no longer had any fame or popularity; no one knew who I was anymore. I was in an all-new environment, surrounded by new people that I had to impress all over again. And just like that, I started stuttering again. When my audience changed, my stuttering returned. Maybe stuttering was my punishment for how I acted in fifth grade. Maybe it was the result of puberty setting my anxieties into overdrive. Maybe a combination of those factors or caused by something else entirely. I don’t quite know why my stuttering came back after my one year of fluency, other than that I had not learned any way to avoid a stutter if the pressure was great enough, and, since then, it never quite left. For the next decade, that was my life. I never raised my hand in class. I stayed up all night practicing for presentations. I made very few friends because I was always scared to introduce myself. And really, I just lived as a shell of my full self. Each time I opened my mouth, I hoped to simply survive the interaction with some dignity in-tact. Forget about engaging with people or having fun or actually living. I just wanted to survive. I just wanted to get my speaking over with as quickly as possible so that no one had to sit through and listen to / see me block on my own damn name.
I didn’t want to live like that, of course. I always knew I had so much potential. I knew I was smart and capable of achieving so much. And I didn’t want to waste all that potential because of stuttering. I refused to let that happen. So I researched and researched and researched. I met with multiple different speech therapists. I poured my heart and soul into beating this problem, the ultimate problem, once and for all. I read books, watched videos, engaged with other PWS through online communities, and everything in-between. Nothing worked. And the stuff that did work, it didn’t work for long. But somehow, I kept going. I didn’t give up. I was determined to beat this thing and live my life to the fullest.
As John Harrison often argued, that was exactly the key to beating stuttering. In his view, stuttering was the result of “holding back”—that is, it stemmed from the subconscious desire to not speak and make yourself visible as doing so made you vulnerable to the opinions of others. The solution he offered was to live boldly and freely. Wise words indeed, but my teenage self didn’t quite have the wisdom to apply that mindset. So while Harrison’s principles resonated with me, they didn’t offer me a tangible way of implementing them. It was the same thing with Ruth Mead and her philosophy of speaking like a river. It was so much easier, of course, to say that fluency happens you speak without thinking than to actually speak without thinking. While I wanted to follow their paths to recovery, I needed actual steps and tools, not abstract concepts like “speaking like a river” or “not holding back”.
Eventually, I found someone who offered exactly that: Lee Lovett. His books and various other works online provided a step-by-step process for beating stuttering. Furthermore, they complimented the philosophies of Harrison and Mead, providing a holistic approach to overcoming stuttering that really clicked for me. Lee clearly understood stuttering on a microscopic level, and dedicated more years than I had been alive to understanding and dissecting it. What’s more is that Lee didn’t stop with stuttering; he sought to help PWS/PWSS take their lives a step further through the likes of affirmations and mind training. For so long, my only hope / goal for life was to simply stop stuttering, but Lee reminded me that life had so much more to offer.
That brings me to my life today. After tons of practice and numerous coaching sessions with coach Prathusha, my goal is no longer overcoming stuttering—no, my goal is being brave in the face of fear. I have every possible tool I could ever need to guarantee that I never stutter ever again, and yet, I don’t always use those tools. I hesitate. I hold back. And when I do that, I suffer. But after nearly two decades of this, I’m tired of suffering. I’m tired of just drifting through life and always dreading what’s going to happen every time I open my mouth. That’s no way to live. I want to live fully and freely and proudly and happily. And every day, I internalize that mindset a bit more. In doing so, I continuously get closer to living my life on my terms, as really, that’s the only thing that matters. And as for stuttering? Well, there’s much more to life than stuttering, and I am determined to live it to the fullest. So if you made it this far, dear reader, know this: you are much more than your stuttering and have so much to offer to this world, more than you realize. You will beat your stuttering one day, but until that day comes, don’t neglect all the other wonderful parts of your life. Always pursue what makes you happy, and ironically enough, that may just make your journey to fluency even easier. You can join WSSA by downloading the StopStutter app or simply search word stop stuttering academy online to access the website. Do it. There is finally a way to end the world’s stuttering. Let’s use this program and get it done.
Shiraz Khan September 2025