How I Overcame My Stutter

After having years of unsuccessful speech therapy I decided the only way I was going to achieve fluency was to try and overcome it myself. Being a negative thinker at the time I had little confidence in my ability to succeed.

Most of my achievements in life up to this point had been sporting and I asked myself the question, how had I reached the high standards at these sports? What I used to do was watch and study the best people in that sport and to basically try and copy them, and with plenty of practice and dedication, I gradually improved.

I decided to take this approach with my speech, I would concentrate on various good fluent talkers, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Chris Tarrant, and Bianca from Eastenders etc, and try and work out the differences between their speech and mine.

The second approach was to deal with the psychological factor. I needed to think and approach life differently, gain confidence and to be thinking in the same way as when I was "merry" after a glass of wine, ie carefree. I started to read various books regarding psychology such as mind over matter publications.

It was slow progress, however I did notice major differences in my speech compared to the good fluent talkers and was practicing solidly to speak more like them.

After six months of searching I finally had the keys and techniques needed to achieve fluency, these are what I now call the speech rules. For me, speech is like a jigsaw and to be fluent you need to have all the pieces to complete the jigsaw. A stutterer will have at least one of the pieces missing. The speech rules are the pieces of the speech jigsaw.

What I now needed to do was to put in a serious amount of practice to enable these speech rules to become a natural part of my speech. I did not know how long I would need to practice for, however I felt after three months that it was now more or less natural.

Success At Last!

Therefore in total it took me nine months to achieve fluency, this is by far the greatest achievement in my life.

It was now time to put my life in order. Even though I had been successful at the insurance company where I worked and was well remunerated, I was unhappy there. I decided to leave with the intention of becoming a financial advisor.

My girlfriend and I also decided to move to Brixham in Devon from Birmingham.

The Move To Help Other Stutterers

Whilst looking for work I put an advert in numerous newspapers in the Devon, and Cornwall area, with the headline being "If you have a stutter, I am an ex-stutterer who can help". I had quite a few responses to the adverts, however not as many as I had expected. I wrote handwritten letters to the people who had contacted me and after only two weeks I helped my first client, a fourteen year old girl from Exeter. I helped her over a continuous five day period, her father was also present, both were more than happy with the results.

After two more successful five day courses, I decided to put the career as a financial advisor on hold, to try to make helping people to achieve fluency a full time career. I set myself a goal for the first year of helping fifteen people, by the end of that year I had helped eighteen. I wanted to purchase a computer which would help the letters to look more professional, I bought a computer after about eight months. I felt I needed a website and during the early months of year two achieved this goal.

The Media Takes Notice

During June of 1999, I had my fifteen minutes of fame. I was featured in Woman's Own magazine and had articles written about how I had achieved fluency in every national newspaper including a front page appearance in the Daily Telegraph. I was interviewed on Talk Sport, Radio 2, 4 and 5, and numerous local radio stations. This is something I would have found virtually impossible only a few years before.

Over the past six years (up to 2002) I have helped many stutterer's to reach their goal of fluency including people from Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Ireland.

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