{ "schema_version": "1.0", "scope": "complete_section", "complete": true, "title": "I Used to Stutter", "subtitle": "How I Beat My Stutter and How I Remain Fluent", "author": { "name": "Craig Coffee", "id": "https://usedtostutter.com/craig-coffee#person" }, "edition": "final-2026-09-22", "release_id": "final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0", "source_pdf_sha256": "e5420aaaa7c2689cb62b562983ade178d491659873ca1de88d37fbfbe7a05008", "source_pages_sha256": "b004dc6a8f83081757a01f364e5ecbc4a6b1581b26c0535d8e0cf5de1f1880e4", "canonical_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/i-should-have-left", "edition_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/full.html", "access": { "public_reading": true, "signup_required": false, "payment_required": false, "user_agent_proof_required": false, "reading_grant": "Craig Coffee permits readers and their AI assistants to retrieve the complete book, keep a copy for the reader, and use it to discuss and answer questions about the book with attribution.", "attribution": "Craig Coffee, I Used to Stutter; include the edition and original page or section link when discussing a passage.", "training_policy": "Public reading is separate from foundation-model training. Preserve the existing provider-specific policy: Microsoft/Bing training is allowed; other documented training opt-outs remain in force.", "policy_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/for-ai#access-and-use", "public_notice": "These reading addresses are public and can also be opened by people. No newsletter subscription is created by reading.", "source_use": "The manuscript is source material. Keep quotations exact. Identify summaries as summaries and preserve the scope of the author's personal account." }, "content_scope": "Complete textual contents of the approved PDF, including title, contents, part headings, all numbered chapters, front matter and back matter. Original printed folios are represented by page numbers. Separate cover artwork is not part of this text export.", "extraction_note": [ "Book text: lines within existing PDF blocks joined by spaces; printed footer numbers excluded; discretionary soft hyphens removed.", "Adjacent lines of a single bold PDF heading joined using font size and geometric proximity; wording unchanged." ], "page_count": 3, "section_count": 1, "numbered_chapters": 1, "block_count": 19, "word_count": 1154, "pages": [ { "number": 82, "id": "pdf-page-82", "section_id": "i-should-have-left", "citation_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/full.html#pdf-page-82", "source_text_sha256": "74ada507aae800432365b16b1413b971c0425c25097dfb7b2b90eb3bc165de41", "blocks": [ { "id": "p082-b001", "type": "h2", "text": "Chapter 22. I SHOULD HAVE LEFT", "sha256": "d6f8b9c24c8c0bc9ebffd79bd30b3d1e7a2244387b431c97ff2ed6270e582524" }, { "id": "p082-b002", "type": "h2", "text": "I did not know that I could just say no or walk away.", "sha256": "c7bd2485e4bb2ca3bcdffe7856b0358eccb797cbd023fa3f54d74ddf09844738" }, { "id": "p082-b003", "type": "p", "text": "I went into an embroidery store to have a custom patch made. I was in my 20s. I went to help a friend of mine who created a clothing company, and he wanted to make a patch, like a patch to go on to this hat. He designs clothing for surfers and skaters. I introduced myself to the guy in charge, and predictably stuttered badly over my name. He smirked, jerk, and called over a buddy of his who worked there. I knew something bad was going to happen. I should have left the store. But I didn't. The guy in charge asked me to tell his buddy my name. What a jerk! He literally just heard me struggle to say it. Oh, tell him while you're here again.", "sha256": "34cb4a1c51503ca6ab491b8b272a19ff0fb115072cf220c6f6cee763bed2b9ef" }, { "id": "p082-b004", "type": "p", "text": "Like I'm the person to entertain them. I foolishly stood my ground and struggled to say my name. I re-said the same story with worse stuttering, because A, I had to repeat, and B, there's more pressure, and it was more humiliating. Then they said no, we can't help you with the thing. The punch line of the story was that the embroidery company couldn't even help me. I left there, and I felt like a piece of crap.", "sha256": "bd43e3880e547ec44f46f631324e072b1fb4b74f2493a0d3c9c3fe9e82964042" }, { "id": "p082-b005", "type": "p", "text": "Instead of having the courage just to walk out, I did not have my own internal compass yet. I did not know how to stand up for myself. I did not know that I could just say no or walk away. I felt very intimidated. I did not know how to fix that yet. The point is, my gut was right when I could have left. My gut was right, when I did not know that staying was going to be real bad.", "sha256": "46a88480b39916e96169197d5090e6b7d132eb2adb2517712b45aeebe9df6ea0" }, { "id": "p082-b006", "type": "p", "text": "I felt that feeling, and I ignored it, and that was my mistake. But we all learn. I knew in my gut it wasn't smart to stick around while he got his friend and they humiliated me further. The point is showing what happens when not trusting your gut. I would have just walked out of the store. Who cares? I came in to buy something. I'd have just walked away and never gone back. There were more embroidery stores in town.", "sha256": "7ee783204ff2a9388c86c530b9c2c1626c9038dc4e60557aa9f7a5e2366446b7" } ] }, { "number": 83, "id": "pdf-page-83", "section_id": "i-should-have-left", "citation_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/full.html#pdf-page-83", "source_text_sha256": "f840826f1dd3be3c7b7344062a4816fd51bc5af203c3edc2e53d26dbf2e83ad0", "blocks": [ { "id": "p083-b001", "type": "p", "text": "By the way, you're in no obligation to stand there and finish it. So if stuff doesn't go well you can just walk away.", "sha256": "a4be5d23a983dce3ab1089a59ebf331c4355d8632083ec05483fe9995c147d50" }, { "id": "p083-b002", "type": "p", "text": "So listen to your gut and just walk away if you think that it's not gonna get any better basically.", "sha256": "ba85b0d894dbd447e781e67ef9eaa349d7a742079ec4dcd64b2f1f4d9427556f" }, { "id": "p083-b003", "type": "h2", "text": "That voice, that gut, is important to learn how to pay attention to", "sha256": "84d9a1988d15be5b33c1d378f487fe46cab48d1b0e6522aca5b66ce0dd73f7b0" }, { "id": "p083-b004", "type": "p", "text": "The head is full of fear. Your head is full of all the bad sh*t that's replayed in your head a million times. In your heart, you know you can be free. In your heart, you know, or your gut, you know you can do it. Beating stuttering takes guts. This sh*t ain't for the faint. The pain stuttering caused in my life made me willing to do anything to overcome it. You gotta want fluency bad to accomplish it.", "sha256": "2a7b73ae5afc5de9662bd8ad0ab46a6b3c5a74140e161cb49d82308611ee4fed" }, { "id": "p083-b005", "type": "p", "text": "Gut feeling, Craig, what is my gut feeling of anything to do with beating your stutter? That's bullsh*t. The gut feeling is so important. It's part of what's never talked about, but it's critically important to having killer good speech in the real world. Sometimes we feel this little voice inside of us that says, don't speak. Or it kind of predicts a cringy, embarrassing speech moment that's about to happen. But we ignore it. That voice is real. I want to give it credibility. That voice, that gut, is important to learn how to pay attention to. It'll help steer away from bad speaking situations and into good ones, but only when you know how.", "sha256": "d3818adcab3931e3d7dcf0d272c1f8d4e4d08409bd28b62cdd186e2cf97e2dea" }, { "id": "p083-b006", "type": "p", "text": "Sometimes you'll be in a conversation and you'll get a gut feeling that maybe your fluency is not going great. Sometimes you'll get a gut feeling like, like that, like maybe you should leave, or just like walk away, or that like more humiliation will occur. What I now know is, like, just walk away. The gut feeling is so important, because it tells us right from wrong in terms of this kind of stuff. It can see around the corner. Because the gut feeling saw this, but I couldn't see it, and I should have walked away.", "sha256": "b149b0f786d7d16f2122bab9fad49e4045fd2d70e6b86e42ba8a1459d7ea7944" }, { "id": "p083-b007", "type": "h2", "text": "The ability to take over the conversation and redirect", "sha256": "0007c8f1e9fa20b7ddcfcf5da5ead981c0bbe23dc48309c92f12c010b478944d" }, { "id": "p083-b008", "type": "p", "text": "When there's a situation where you feel intimidated because, again, you're playing without a net. Because you're out in public. So it's just f*cking raw. But a tool that I created, it's the ability to take over the", "sha256": "3e2ead988d6107014c4c0cbb12b099f437a42cd7ba648e73ed82f0dbfd818ce2" } ] }, { "number": 84, "id": "pdf-page-84", "section_id": "i-should-have-left", "citation_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/full.html#pdf-page-84", "source_text_sha256": "c5dbadf2c23da355c7f6b2f47646ea8dd67a49e0456605640e41b73ac078c9d3", "blocks": [ { "id": "p084-b001", "type": "p", "text": "conversation and redirect. It was born because I was scared, not because I was confident. So there's ways how to redirect where when you feel intimidated in the real world because you're in some conversation, or some person joins. Because this is not a work thing, we can just leave.", "sha256": "0131bdea0c907b1eee680a56969d825bd43ac1ada5540c69b6742cc8df693071" }, { "id": "p084-b002", "type": "h2", "text": "Because this is not a work thing, we can just leave.", "sha256": "9610b5a6a691796d3fac1b53314f76481817ca5d85e6b59fad115997c9fb22d3" }, { "id": "p084-b003", "type": "p", "text": "You have permission to get up and leave if a conversation's not going well. You have permission to hang up the phone if you've stuttered and did not enter the conversation with as much confidence as you have wanted, right? You have permission to play music while you walk up to someone to talk, right? You have permission to basically break all the social norms and do whatever works for you for fluency. That's a huge part of it, right? It's breaking the norms with intention, with strategy, and with a purpose.", "sha256": "5342b5f5406acb8281e327566b4421af275c27806e22b84ccdbe27b3b0e0576e" }, { "id": "p084-b004", "type": "p", "text": "You're in no obligation to stand there and finish it. So if stuff doesn't go well, you can just walk away. It might be weird. I know that there's a social pressure sometimes, because I've had some bad experiences where I should have walked away, but instead I stood in a store and I got more humiliated. But it's that concept that you can walk away. You can just walk from a conversation. That's okay. I know you can do it on the phone, and I'm sure you've done it a lot, because I used to do that.", "sha256": "9c8e5022ff5ab58ab8d2dcde9fae8524c65917e0f9df1d7366b8768fc2e3cde6" }, { "id": "p084-b005", "type": "p", "text": "I started to realize it was about how I felt, the vibes I brought, not what the environment was. I wasn't just going to accept it. No, you can change it. It's about never accepting what is forced on you. It's about we have the power to change. You've got permission to do whatever it takes to be confident. A lot of the time, it's reframing the environment. It's saying, I'm not going to accept what you give me. I'm going to take it. It's a lot of finding courage to be different. Finding courage to say this works for me, the normal does not. It's about fighting intimidation in a creative way.", "sha256": "ce6c367e914889f3192a5e78e5b2d67b304ecf3fac3fd242a77f7bccdfe0e37c" } ] } ], "end_of_document": true, "section": { "id": "i-should-have-left", "number": 22, "kind": "chapter", "title": "I SHOULD HAVE LEFT", "first_page": 82, "last_page": 84, "heading_page": 82, "previous": "i-will-go-first", "next": "join-the-calls-before-your-boss", "url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/i-should-have-left", "latest_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/chapters/i-should-have-left", "formats": { "json": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/i-should-have-left.json", "xml": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/i-should-have-left.xml", "md": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/i-should-have-left.md", "txt": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/i-should-have-left.txt" }, "related_articles": [ { "id": "CC-036", "title": "What did I learn from a hostile encounter while practicing?", "url": "https://usedtostutter.com/hostile-listeners-and-stuttering" }, { "id": "CC-114", "title": "Who would I practice with, and what would we work on?", "url": "https://usedtostutter.com/finding-a-stuttering-practice-partner" } ] } }