Using The Speech Tools To Overcome "Incurable" Stuttering

Learning to use speech tools wasn’t the hard part for me. What was hard — and what took the most time — was learning how to stop forcing my words. I had to teach myself to pause the moment I felt tension in my face or realized I was pushing too hard to get the words out. Like so many others who stutter, I desperately wanted to become fluent. But I knew that unless I made a personal commitment — a kind of internal decision to monitor my speech patterns and refuse to let stuttering take over — I’d keep struggling.

I’ve seen this firsthand with students I coach in stuttering speech therapy. One student recently had the exact same challenge. The breakthrough came when he finally decided to stop forcing words and started applying the speech tools consistently. It was like a light switch flipped — and now his progress is undeniable. I fully believe he’s on the path to a self-cure. Another student I’m working with, however, hasn’t yet made that same commitment. I’m trying to help her understand that without being willing to change her approach — to try the speech tools and take ownership of her speaking habits — she’ll stay stuck in the same cycle. If you want different results, you have to try something different.

It’s a lot like driving a car: If you start losing control, the first step is to stop accelerating. Once you do, you can choose how to respond — steer, brake, slow down — you have options. That’s exactly how speech tools work. There are many strategies you can use to prevent a stutter, but you have to know them well enough to use them instinctively.

When someone hasn’t mastered the tools yet, I often tell them: If you feel a stutter coming, stop speaking. But many resist. They say, “I have to speak in that situation,” and use that as a reason why they had to stutter. But here’s the truth: You never have to speak. If you lost your voice completely, would you still be able to survive? Of course. You’d find other ways to communicate. So choosing to stutter — instead of pausing or using a speech tool — is never the better option. It damages your confidence and affects the listener too.

Taking responsibility for your speech is not the only part of overcoming stuttering. There are many mindset and neuroscience-based strategies — including fluency shaping and mental retraining — that are outlined in Lee Lovett's book and the stuttering course.

But here’s the bottom line: If you keep allowing stuttering to happen, you keep creating more stuttering memories — and that only makes the road to a self-cure longer. Only you can stop the cycle. It’s your choice. Choose fluency.