As someone who recently attended a 3-day course with the McGuire Programme, I can attest to the importance and value of peer support. The course was intense and challenging, but the support and encouragement from my peers made all the difference.
Change takes considerable time and effort. Changing something like old stuttering behaviors takes considerable effort. You will need to put up with the discomfort, uncertainty, and hard work on a daily basis. Until such time that you have developed and grown into the person, you want to become.
When starting a conversation with a stranger, there is a very high probability that they will be receptive to you. We are by nature, social creatures, and as such, we generally welcome interactions with others. But for people who stutter this can be a fearful scenario and we wouldn’t dare interact for fear of rejection or simply not being understood. But now with the control taught by the programme, it’s made easier and starts to become fun.
My experience being on the programme and how it all led to a great interview experience.
We held our second course for 2019 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands at the end of August with 3 new students joining our programme and 20 returning members, who came back to work on their own speech. No matter how many courses I attend, I’m still amazed at the transformation of people who stutter, who get to grips with their stuttering n such a short period of time. But it’s important to state here, that this is only the beginning of the process (a life-changing process) and that there is a lot of practice required, with dedicated time and effort required to maintain the gains achieved during the first course.
Physical, psychological & emotional. The first day of the course, the physical day is always the hardest one. We are asking the new students to trust complete strangers as we are rewiring their speech completely.
We didn’t require lots of coaches, but we did have enough coaches to get a different voice and coaching style throughout the 3 intensive days. Having a small but lively and committed coaching team was essential to give our new student a sense of community and support. If we didn’t do this, it would only be the instructor who was teaching and coaching at the same time.
