Embracing Stuttering: Confidence, Communication, and Self-Acceptance with James Burden
Is stuttering a problem to be fixed or a unique way of speaking to be embraced? In this powerful episode, James Burden, a speech-language pathologist and coach, challenges outdated views on stuttering and reveals why true confidence comes from self-acceptance, not just fluency.
James shares his journey from traditional speech therapy to a transformational coaching approach that helps professionals and entrepreneurs who stutter speak with conviction, stand out in meetings, and go after their goals—without self-doubt holding them back.
🔥 Inside This Episode:
✅ Why stuttering is a neurodiversity, not a disorder
✅ How confidence—not perfect speech—is the key to communication
✅ The hidden struggles of covert stuttering and how to overcome them
✅ Why traditional speech therapy often fails (and what actually works)
✅ How professionals and entrepreneurs can turn stuttering into an asset
🎧 Listen now and discover a new approach to stuttering that empowers, uplifts, and transforms!
📌 Get James' Free Masterclass:
📩 Want to amplify your voice and monetize your message? Reach out at jill@gnostictv.com to explore how we can help you leverage podcasting on the Gnostic TV Network.
🚀 Tune in, get inspired, and step into your power. The world needs your voice!
Resources
👉Alchemist's Guide to Podcast Audiences & Best Be a Guest Directory - discover where your ideal clients are tuning in and how to get featured on those podcasts.
👉Podcasting on Substack - the Ultimate Guide for Coaches & Creators to Leverage Substack for Getting Visible
▶ Workshops for leveraging podcasts to attract clients & build authority
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Transcript
WEBVTT
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hi and welcome to the You world order showcase podcast where we feature life, health, and transformational coaches as well as spiritual entrepreneurs stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart, the coaches alchemist on a mission to help coaches and entrepreneurs amplify their voice and monetize their mission and get visible leveraging podcasts. And the huge network we have on the Gnostic TV platform.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Today, we're chatting with James Burden, who is a speech language pathologist registered in British Columbia, Canada. He's most famous for his coaching service, helping professionals and entrepreneurs who stutter, speak with conviction.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: welcome to the show, James. It's really great to have you here.
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::James Burden: Hi, Jill! Thanks for having me on the show.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, I'm going to ask you the big question. Now, are you ready.
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::James Burden: I'm ready.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, what's the most significant thing in your opinion, as individuals, we can do to make an impact on how the world is going.
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::James Burden: When it comes to stuttering. The biggest impact that we can all make is to begin to realize that stuttering is completely normal.
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::James Burden: We want to understand that stuttering is part of the normal human spectrum of the way people speak.
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::James Burden: It's not a disease, it's not a disorder. It is what we now know as a neurodiverty, just like autism.
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::James Burden: Adhd, or being left handed, is my favorite one.
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::James Burden: And the more we begin to understand that
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::James Burden: the easier it is for the people who stutter to be able to speak, and occasionally make a mistake by stuttering, and I say that with a certain tone, because I don't believe stuttering is a mistake.
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::James Burden: We all do it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and stumble over our words and have all kinds of communication problems.
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::James Burden: Absolutely.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So how did you get started in this this kind of a
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't run into very many speech therapists or stuttering coaches.
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::James Burden: No, and I'm sure you don't. There's not a lot of speech therapists, and there's even fewer people speech therapists who work in stuttering as a focus. So you're not going to meet too many of us. I don't think
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::James Burden: how I got into it. When I was still in grad school. This was in 2,008. So it was like 16 years ago. I was doing a practicum as part of my grad school, and I went and I worked with 10
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::James Burden: people who stutter in a an intensive group program. This is with Columbia speech and language services in Vancouver. And I was. I was just this student, but I got to witness 10 people go from
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::James Burden: stuttering rather intensely
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::James Burden: to completely fluent. But I don't want you to get caught up on fluency or speaking without stuttering, because that's only part of the story.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But tell us the rest of the story.
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::James Burden: All right. Yeah, no problem. So the rest of the story is. So I get to watch this wonderful transformation. And I was absolutely moved by it. I changed my focus in my grad paper, and then I started. After graduation. I started working with my mentor from Grad school, Lisa Avery and a couple other different mentors, sandy Bone.
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::James Burden: Wendy Duke, all from Vancouver, who are in the stuttering world, and I started to get their clients, and I started to see big changes. I I was like, I'm good at this, you know.
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::James Burden: My clients were coming in, stuttering and leaving out fluent, and later on I had my own journey with the old midlife crisis, and I'm like I wanted to leave my job and start something new. So I started stuttering blueprint, and I was focusing on fluency like I'd always done. And
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::James Burden: then
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::James Burden: 2023 happened, and some of the biggest names in stuttering like Barry Guitar, who wrote the textbook that I learned from in grad school
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::James Burden: are now saying that stuttering is a neurodiversity.
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::James Burden: You know, it's we always knew it was kind of normal part of the human spectrum, but I've never
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::James Burden: heard that word applied to it before. And then I went and I talked to another one of my mentors.
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::James Burden: This was Kim Block, and she was the president of the BC. Association of people who stutter. And she started telling me about the neurodiversity stuff and ableism, and how fluency approaches that ignore the underlying self-doubt, the the underlying fear of stuttering that they missed the mark. And
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::James Burden: and so I started to think, oh, my gosh! I've been part of the problem teaching people
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::James Burden: how to be fluent when I should have been working on self-acceptance. And I I went into a bit of a shame spiral myself. I was like, what am I even doing here? I've been doing the wrong thing all these years, you know. I was helping people be fluent.
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::James Burden: and then, you know, I so I went, and I checked in with some of my old clients, and it turns out they were able to hold on to their fluency
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::James Burden: for a while.
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::James Burden: but then, after a while, they they didn't keep up their practice, and the shame and the self. Doubt started to creep back in, and they started going back to old avoidance behaviors. And then
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::James Burden: I knew I had to change something.
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::James Burden: So that's where the new stuttering blueprint came from.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Really interesting. I
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I've heard a couple of things about stuttering, but I'm going to run by you because I think it kind of ties in with this one is that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: people who stutter are are generally highly intelligent people.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and they just have trouble getting their their brain and their mouth to coordinate quickly as quickly as they think it's like they think so much faster than they can process the words to come out.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Is there any validity to that? Or or is it just like a
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: a rumor that I heard somewhere along the lines.
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::James Burden: It's not a it's not a terrible way of thinking about it, and I certainly agree with you. Many of my clients are very intelligent, you know. That's why there are professionals and entrepreneurs. We're not dealing with a population that is
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::James Burden: unable to do. Things are very, very capable, and they're out there doing it. And what you don't realize with stuttering is that the majority of people who stutter are really adept at hiding it. You know we call it covert, stuttering, and
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::James Burden: you know, you know, they manage to pass as fluent.
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::James Burden: But it takes all of this mental effort. They're they're avoiding words. They're avoiding sounds. And the worst part is they're avoiding opportunities and speaking situations. So you know they they like oh.
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::James Burden: or, you know, picking a job where they don't have to communicate as much now. That's not true of everybody, of course, but it does take a lot of mental effort to be maintaining this fluency. And I I call that like white knuckle fluency. You're just like holding on for dear life and and hoping you won't stutter. And
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::James Burden: you know, when we use fluency techniques. That's that's great. And they do work to a degree. But
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::James Burden: if they're not based on a firm foundation of self acceptance.
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::James Burden: they will fail in long run.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That kind of goes across the board with any kind of trauma that we experience as human beings. If we don't get to the core of
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: accepting that we are enough
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: fundamentally, just because we're alive. And we have something of value to contribute to the world
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: just by virtue of the fact that we're human beings and we're alive.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think almost every kind of modality fails.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it's interesting that stuttering is like coming into this realm.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's like accepting people for who they are and valuing them for the contributions they're making, regardless of the way in which they make it
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: or communicate.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I could.
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::James Burden: Agree more and and but more important than what everybody else thinks.
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::James Burden: Is is what's inside, what what the people who stutter or stutters, whatever you like to be called, or you don't identify either way.
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::James Burden: What matters is how you feel on the inside, because
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::James Burden: it's that sort of as within, so without, as above, so below kind of thing. If we are that
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::James Burden: if we, if you put the confidence 1st in in the past, it's like, Oh, if I don't stutter, then I'll be confident.
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::James Burden: But it's kind of the other way around. If if I have self-assurance, then I will stutter less, or when I do stutter, it just won't matter so much.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think that's that was the other thing that I'd heard is that people who stutter tend to stutter more when they're under pressure, and it doesn't have to be external pressure. It can be internal pressure that they're putting on themselves, and the more stressed they are, the more they struggle with
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: being fluent to use your vernacular.
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::James Burden: Absolutely. And and this is true of everybody. Again, it's it's on a spectrum, right? So I stutter when I'm under pressure. I don't identify as a person who stutters I identify as an ally. But
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::James Burden: when I'm under pressure
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::James Burden: I stutter, and that's also true of people who stutter, and that's where a lot of these misconceptions come from that people who stutter are nervous or anxious, or they're not skilled is because when neurotypical people stutter. That's how they're feeling, you know. They only stutter under those circumstances. But people who stutter can stutter when they are confident because of the neurological difference.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's more biological than then, just something that you can fix hey.
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::James Burden: Oh, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Like.
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::James Burden: I love that you use the word fix.
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::James Burden: because that is not what I'm about, not about fixing something that's not broken.
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::James Burden: It's it's much more about like feeling in confident in yourself.
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::James Burden: And then yes, of course, we can work on the speech, but that is the surface level. That's the tip of the iceberg. That's not what's underneath. That's not the big deal.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Is that so? When it comes to why speech therapy fails to work for
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: for people who stutter. This is how, how did how are you different.
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::James Burden: Then the most, the typical way that it's approached.
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::James Burden: Typically in the past we've been looking at it through a medical model. It's something that's wrong, and we're going to fix it. And I talked about the iceberg a minute ago. If we are chipping away at the top of the iceberg.
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::James Burden: which is the speech, and what you and the avoid, and and those things.
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::James Burden: Then it.
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::James Burden: you know, you can chip away at it. But then the bottom of the iceberg is just gonna raise the whole thing back up again.
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::James Burden: My approach, using things like acceptance commitment therapy avoidance reduction. Those those kinds of under the iceberg approaches. We're taking that iceberg. We're taking it to warmer water, and we're melting the bottom.
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::James Burden: And that's gonna reduce the stuttering. But more importantly, it's gonna put people in a position that they're not going to get thrown off when they stutter.
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::James Burden: And I think that's actually more important, because if we all stutter. Then, sooner or later, someone's gonna stutter, and if that throws them off, then it's kind of game over for that conversation.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that we live in a world now that we're not totally there. We're moving in this direction, though, where
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: people can just own who they are, and if they have interesting different speech patterns, they can own their different
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: speech patterns. There are people that are really famous in the world who have
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: different sorts of speech patterns and stuttering is just a speech pattern. Really, it's it's a way that you're
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: articulating what you're trying to get across to people. But
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I can never remember this guy's name, but he's he's really. He was a comedian from the sixties, and he
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: he had had a really different speech pattern. The way he talked sounded unique, and people who stutter but
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: are confident in who they are and own their speech pattern have the ability to
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: just let it be part of who they are and not try to run away from it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Does that make sense to you?
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::James Burden: It that makes perfect sense to me. And it reminds me of this man who came in and he and I'm not gonna use his name. This was part of my speech, therapy practice, but he came in
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::James Burden: with his son, and he was very worried about his son beginning to stutter, but he wasn't worried at all about his own, and he had a very intense stutter, you know every couple of words, and when I stutter like that just to put that at that, I want to normalize it. I want people to
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::James Burden: hear stuttering because it's not.
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::James Burden: It's
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::James Burden: it's something that just happens. But he came in, and he was doing that. He was like having the
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::James Burden: big big stutters like this, and
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::James Burden: and he owned it. He didn't care. He, he about himself. He was totally comfortable with himself, and and that was like a very early tip off for me that there is maybe something wrong with my earlier approaches.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I wonder if if maybe his son wasn't emulating his father just because that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: that was the way his father spoke. So he thought. That's the way you know, somebody I admire speaks. I'm going to
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: be like that also.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And another point that I have is that stuttering allows the listener opportunities to absorb what's being said. If
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you listen with intensity, it causes people to actually have to lean in and hear what you're saying.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It actually can be a an asset.
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::James Burden: Absolutely.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Correctly.
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::James Burden: In fact, I was just on a group call in a stuttering kind of get together online. And the man who was speaking and I'm forgotten his name right now. I apologize, but he was a salesman or is a salesman, and he was saying
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::James Burden: that when he divulges his stutter when he tells people that he stutters before what? Just as the meeting is starting.
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::James Burden: and he doesn't apologize. He doesn't say I'm sorry I stutter thanks for listening to me, he says, I stutter. This is just how I talk
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::James Burden: and owns it. He says that when he has divulged something like that, something that people usually hide it kind of goes to show that he has nothing to hide, and that makes what he says in a sales call
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::James Burden: all the more powerful. If this guy's got nothing to hide, then he's probably not hiding anything about his product, either.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love it. I think it's so important that we normalize a lot of these these differences, instead of forcing everybody to be in these little boxes that are artificial. To begin with, I think, starts with schooling and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: making everybody. We're all going to be the same, and we're all going to stand in line just like this. And we're gonna tell you exactly what the teacher said. We're just gonna repeat it back to you in the same cadence in the same way, and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and without any emotion, because God forbid we be individuals and we be unique, and we share how different we are. And in that way we can learn to accept the the magnificence
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: of the differences that we all exhibit in life.
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::James Burden: And and that's why this is the time for this kind of approach.
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::James Burden: You know a lot of different things are becoming more accepted, I mean. Yes, there's we're going back on it in some ways, but I think the general trend is towards more acceptance. So this is this is the time
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::James Burden: for a stuttering approach. That is about self acceptance.
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::James Burden: I think that.
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::James Burden: you know, you know, still working on stuttering is okay. It's it's okay to stutter. It's okay to change how you speak, how you present yourself, how anybody presents themselves
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::James Burden: is their own choice.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::James Burden: It's not up to me to say the way they decide to do that.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It gives them back their power. They're no longer the victim of circumstances. They are the hero of their own journey. And
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: someday I'm gonna write a book it's called Be your own damn hero own who you are, own all.
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::James Burden: I like that title.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Bibles, own your trauma, own own your triumphs.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: because it's only through grabbing hold and and accepting who we are fundamentally, can we really be that beacon of light that we're here to be.
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::James Burden: And it's only going through those struggles of that hero's journey that makes it
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::James Burden: possible to grow. You kind of have to go through that, and I've been through that myself. I went through a divorce. I had a brain tumor that got operated on in April. I gave up my my original career and started to do stuttering blueprint a couple of years ago. And all of these things there's been trials and tribulations along the way, and if I hadn't had that experience I don't think I'd be in a position to help other people the way I am now.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's it all comes
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: full circle. And it has created the humans that we are in the moment and will continue to create and evolve us into the future. So when it comes to actually coaching people, you do this online, correct.
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::James Burden: Yes, I do it online.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And in groups.
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::James Burden: There's an individual component and a group component. I I like to start with the individual component because a lot of people aren't quite ready to sit down in a room with
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::James Burden: a lot of other people who stutter. In fact, they've been hiding it so long. The thought of actually meeting other people who stutter is is intimidating. You know. What if it triggers me to stutter more, or those kinds of thoughts come up? So I start individually, and so I can get to know my into my clients individually, and then, when people are ready, we transition into the group. But I do think
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::James Burden: that the group is absolutely necessary because it's that normalization. Once you feel comfortable, to to hear other people stuttering, and it doesn't sound so terrible from somebody else, but we judge ourselves so much more.
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::James Burden: When you see other people stutter. It's like, Oh, maybe maybe I could let the odd one out, and I'm not going to be judged. Maybe I'm not going to be judged anywhere near as much as I thought I was.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, I love that. So where do people start with
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: with getting working with you? And and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm just going to put this out here. So I don't forget if you're listening to this episode and you you don't personally stutter. If you know someone who does, please share this with them, because just knowing that there are others out there like you is hugely helpful in helping people not feel so isolated and alone in their differences. But we're all different sort of similar ways.
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::James Burden: And sorry to interrupt you. You might not even know. Necessarily, people are so good at hiding it. But I just want to share this one statistic with you, because it's an important 1. 1% of the world stutters.
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::James Burden: That's, you know, there's there's variation within that on how severe they are, how intense their stutter is, and and I'd say the majority of those people can hide it, but because everyone who is stuttering is hiding it. For the most part it appears like, I'm the only one, or you're the only one that stutters. But there's so many people, 3 million in the Us. Alone, and 80 million people worldwide. That's a lot of people.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, that's a lot of people.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So back to my original question before I got distracted.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: how could how do people get started with you? Do they take your free, online masterclass.
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::James Burden: That's a great way to start. It'll give you a bit of an idea of my approach. And then from there book a call with me my call. The the 1st call is free because I don't want people who started to be thinking like, Okay, I have to. I have to pay money to even talk to this guy. Just
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::James Burden: come, have a chat with me. It's not a pressure situation. It's just like, Is this the right time for you. What's your personal? Why, why is this important to you? If if now is not the time, I'm not gonna put pressure on you? Because why, it's it's not gonna work, anyway. It's a very delicate, time-based readiness, based thing working on your stutter. And if I did put pressure on someone, it would just backfire.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Right back to the the the more pressure internal pressure we have.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Right? Exactly.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's like, yeah, that's not gonna work.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So the name of your online class is this three-step system that helps professionals and entrepreneurs who stutter to speak with conviction so they can confidently stand out in meetings, impress clients and go after their goal without constantly worrying about their speech. And I love that because it's really targeted at professionals
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: who need to be able to communicate in group settings, or even one on one. I loved your story about the the gentleman that was the salesperson. That that's a really powerful
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: testimonial about how you can embrace your
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: your neurodiversity and and live a rich, full life, and really help other people in the process.
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::James Burden: Yeah, I thank you for sharing the name of the the course I or the the masterclass. I should say it's not a full course
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::James Burden: it's it's aimed at professionals and entrepreneurs, because those people already have skin in the game. They're already using their voice to some degree, and maybe they're holding themselves back from that next level, and also
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::James Burden: to be able to do it without this constant nagging self-doubt. I think it's more about releasing that so that you can go after your goals than it is aiming at perfect speech.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, it can put speech back where it belongs. It's just that thing we do.
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::James Burden: And that's.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We think about doing all the time.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Thanks so much for joining us today, James, to learn more about.
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::James Burden: Everyone.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To learn more about James and to get access to his free online workshop. Please visit
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: stutteringblueprint.com forward, slash register.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and we'll be sure to put that link in the show notes. Thank you for joining us today. And if you have a podcast are interested in starting one to get your message in front of our huge and active audience, be sure to check or reach out to us at support@heartlifecoach.com. We love to help spiritual entrepreneurs and coaches, amplify their voice and monetize their mission and offer a variety of ways to do this on the Gnostic TV network platform.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: join us for our next episode, as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency. And remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world, start today and get visible.
