My name is Avidor. I’m 41, and I live in France, where I am a work for the government. I wrote this Success Story in French, and it was translated by my coach, Richard Parent, who has translated all the editions of Lee Lovett’s “Stuttering & Anxiety Self-Cures” into French. I read Lee’s book in French, and Richard helped me understand and apply Lee’s methods.
I come now to share my testimony about the Lee Lovett Method. First of all, I would like to thank Richard, for all his precious advices and experience with stuttering that he gave me during the Skype sessions we had together. He is a great example that it is possible to be a stutterer and that you can overcome this handicap. Both RIchard and Lee lovett are incredibly generous people because they give their time for free in order to help people who suffer from this handicap that is stuttering.
I think that I have always been a stutterer and that I have learned to speak with this handicap. I really started to be interested and to put a word to my handicap when I had to speak in front of a group at work…. and being very shy by nature… I had to face a big test. I think that naturally to speak in front of anyone, I have healed myself. That is to say that I used some of Lee’s “Crutches” without knowing what they were… and they helped me to “pass” words that I knew were difficult to pronounce, but I still stuttered under pressure.
I tried as part of my professional training to move up, to find a speech therapist to help me heal quickly… The first thing she told me was that it was almost unheard that I stuttered. This made me feel good, but I explained to her that I was doing an incredible amount of work inside to talk like that. That nothing was natural. Every word I said passed my speech “customs”…. Sometimes I was totally fluent and other times I had a lot of trouble speaking. She couldn’t understand that a stutterer can be totally fluent in one situation and not be able to talk in another. After a few sessions she gave me 2 or 3 tips and told me that she thought I was practically cured. That it was over. But I knew that I was not really cured because my stuttering had a mind of its own. I didn’t really have control over it.
I saw another speech therapist again a few years later who I thought was totally inept at stuttering, that I didn’t stutter. She told me the same thing as the other one…. I had cured myself. I quickly stopped. I knew that I was 80 to 90% cured but I needed a real coach. Someone who could understand stuttering to be able to give me the rest of the percentages I was missing.
The problem is that in my professional environment… stuttering is not allowed 🚫. Weakness is forbidden so to speak. So, I’ve always talked myself out of any speech errors. And talking about stuttering to anyone was inconceivable to me. I Googled…. and there I come across the Lee lovett… Method. wow 😃😃😃. Amazing.
I started reading Lee’s book. The 3rd edition… I immediately saw and knew I was dealing with a true stuttering professional… First Lee Lovett is a former stutterer, so he knows what it’s like to stutter and secondly he’s educated himself as a person to heal. He said things in his book that only a stutterer can understand. I learned to understand “my” stutter. I discovered something obvious that no speech therapist had told me before…. TRAINING THE BRAIN. This to me is the most important thing. I quickly wanted to learn how to self-hypnotize. I tried to do it once a day and preferably in the morning. And above all, I use a lot of Crutches, and Lee has a lot of them, to avoid having any speech handicap. … the result after a few months… I learned to know my stuttering… I reprogram myself slowly. And above all, I accept more and more to make speech mistakes. I am less hard on myself. Words are naturally easier to pronounce. I am less and less shy. I am moving in the right direction. My speech is almost always fluent and when it stutters… I avoid it with a Crutch. The fear of stuttering is dying. I think soon it will be completely gone.
By accepting that we don’t have perfect speech and that we make mistakes like everyone else, we are no longer afraid to stutter. Thank you, Richard, for your coaching sessions and thank you Lee Lovett for your precious help even if we don’t know each other. I hope that my story will encourage others to study your methods and become fluent as I have.
AVIDOR, France, July 2021
Translated by Richard Parent