commentr/StutterJanuary 12, 2026

Content

honest opinion is that it is more like a program for someone who wants to improve their public speaking skills and confidence, not a stuttering therapy program. Even then, I don't think anything it offers on its website reflects evidence-based strategies. The brain science that is cited on the website has nothing to do with stuttering. For example, the program targets anxiety (which affects your amygdala) and blames the fear response for blocking access to memory and articulation in the prefrontal cortex. This description is how normally fluent speakers become disfluent, but has nothing to do with stuttering or how stuttering happens. Stuttering for people who stutter happens because of increased white matter in the pathway that facilitates signals between the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes (arcuate fasciculus), and has nothing to do with the amygdala, little to do with the prefrontal cortex (the language area of the brain is located next to the prefrontal cortex), and nothing to do with fear, anxiety, or memory. Furthermore, there is a consensus that the areas of the brain responsible for speech in the right hemisphere of the brain are overactive, while underactive in the left hemisphere, while speaking. Yes, a fear response can make stuttering more severe and cause non-stuttering disfluencies, but the reality is that you can take all of the fear away and still stutter. The approach it takes to rewire your brain by altering the basal ganglia is used out of context. When we learn to play an instrument, type on a keyboard without looking, or practice dribbling a basketball, we are training procedural muscle memory, and this happens in the basal ganglia. However, the thought that you could do the same to eliminate stuttering is misguided. Every therapy approach that has tried to do this in the past (talking with a metronome, delayed auditory feedback, fluency shaping) has been shown to have minor short-term effects that are either short lived or result in long-term harm. People who go through fluency shaping and other basal-ganglia type therapy approaches have a short lived period of fluency. Further, because stuttering isn't something that can be rewired or cured, trying to make a person who stutters speak fluently all of the time is like trying to train a fish to climb a tree: instead, time should be spent improving what the fish can do (swim), just as the person who stutters can spend their time focusing on what they can control (their attitude, mindset, approach to speaking, etc.). In short, the program provides real brain research that could be helpful for training procedural muscle memory in movements other than speech. There is simply no way to "rewire the brain" when stuttering is caused by anatomical differences. From an evidence-based practice standpoint, there is nothing presented on the website that reflects best practices in stuttering therapy. The program might improve confidence, especially if someone buys into it. But you saying that you were not really feeling like it was helping is evidence enough that it wasn't working for you. In truth, this program couldn't be more different than what we and others who are up to date on evidence-based practice for stuttering.

Themes

Causes & VariabilityIdentity & DisabilityTherapy & ProfessionalCoping & Advocacy

Subthemes

Neurological & BrainMedicalization / NeurodiversityUnhelpful Therapy TechniquesMindset shift