Only a person who has a stutter can truly understand just how much it can impact on your life. This, perhaps, goes a long way to explaining why traditional speech therapy proven in-effective in helping me. I started to stutter at the age of four and by the age of twenty-two I had basically had enough. I was desperate to find a cure for my stutter and in the end decided to attempt to find my own solution.
How I Overcame My Stutter
At speech therapy I was given various pieces of advice; you need to speak slowly, you need to take a deep breath before speaking, you need to accept your stutter/stammer and there is no cure for stuttering.
I decided to ignore all of these points. Fluent people do not, in general, speak slowly; they also do not take deep breaths before they speak. I wanted to be able to speak fluently and therefore wanted to speak in the same way that fluent do. Accept the stutter, you must be joking. There is not a cure for stuttering, this is something that I could not believe, the thought of having the stutter for the rest of my life was a thought that I would never have.
In my attempt to achieve fluency I decided to study people who I believed were very good speakers, these include politicians, television presenters and actors. I also needed to learn how to deal with pressure and anxiety as these were the situations where my stutter would become the most severe.
I read many books including ones about how to gain confidence. I worked very hard on all of these areas, progress, it has to be said, was slow but progress there most certainly was.
In the end it took me nearly a year to overcome the stutter. The feeling of being able to achieve fluency, free from the fear of stuttering is one that words can not describe. Let's just say that people are now able to get to know the real Steve Hill.
Steve Hill helps to promote a number of websites including:
Disclaimer: All information on this site is
provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice
provided to you by any health care or other professional or
organization.
