Lovett Helping People Who Stutter Defeat It
Bermuda resident Lee Lovett has co-written a new book offering a fresh, practical approach to supporting people who stutter, blending clinical insight with coaching expertise.
Mr Lovett knows first-hand how deeply stuttering can affect quality of life, relationships, and career prospects.
A successful speaker, attorney, and businessman, he battled the condition for 25 years before discovering methods to overcome it.
He has considered himself “cured” for the past 40 years and now dedicates his time to helping others through free online coaching sessions.
His latest work, The Speech Professionals Guide to Helping Stutterers, is his ninth book on the subject.
“Since speech language pathologists and other speech professionals still believed and taught that stuttering is incurable and must be accepted, and since I had proved for myself and countless others that stuttering could be stopped, I decided to write a book just for speech professionals, Speech Professionals Guide to Helping Stutterers,” Mr Lovett told Bernews.
“This book is the culmination of my life’s stuttering-work. It is my hope that this book, along with our over 2,000 online-posted stuttering videos, will show speech professionals that stuttering can be stopped and so they will stop preaching “incurability and acceptance” and pass the word about WSSA, our methods and programme.”
Mr Lovett collaborated with Bermudian speech pathologist Marisa Brangman and Indian neurologist Dr Parth Bansal to create the guide.
“Marissa Brangman, a speech language pathologist, never stuttered and had been taught that stuttering was incurable and must be accepted,” he said.
“When she attended the stuttering workshop that I did in Bermuda, she saw videos of stutterers stopping stuttering. “She then approached me to learn more and pass the world to other speech professionals.
“She and I decided to write a book. Dr Parth Bansal, an M.D. and neurologist, stuttered fairly severely.
“He came to me for help with stuttering. After he used our methods to stop his stuttering, as an M.D., he wanted to help others.
“I told him about Marissa’s and my book, and he volunteered to help, adding his neurological training.
“Obviously, having a co-author who was an M.D. and neurologist helped us write a better book.
“All three of us are hopeful that this book will help speech professionals encourage and guide speech professionals to stop preaching incurability and acceptance and pass the word that methods now exist to stop stuttering, hopefully expediting the end of stuttering worldwide.”
Mr Lovett also described the methods he teaches to help people overcome stuttering.
“We retrain the mind to replace a stuttering habit with a fluency habit,” he said.
“The stutterer must first stop stuttering and hear only fluency from his lips.
“We help the stutterer do this in two ways: we use mild forms of self-hypnosis, forms of simple self-talk and much the same as one learns a new language, we immerse the mind in fluency and block dysfluency.
“To hear fluency, we ask stutterers to read aloud alone, which most can do without stuttering, for one hour minimum daily and to record those readings and play them in idle times, even while sleeping.
“By so doing, the mind is daily immersed hearing one’s own voice being fluent. We also explain methods to avoid hearing stuttering; these methods are called tools or crutches; there are 12 of these; they are temporary; that is, once the stuttering habit is broken, they are no longer needed.
“Examples include dropping the first letter of a word; using a synonym, similar word or phrase; telling short story about the problem word; inserting a sound or different word and jamming it into the problem word.”
The Speech Professionals Guide to Helping Stutterers is available on Amazon.com
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