I started to stutter when I was a little girl. Throughout my whole life stuttering influenced every decision I made. I used to stutter severely, getting stuck on words when speaking with everyone, but even more so with my family. I’m married now and have children. Strangers don’t see me as a stutterer anymore.
Throughout my school years I had many embarrassing moments due to my speech and because of that, the anxiety I felt when speaking grew in all situations, no matter to whom I spoke to. At some points of my liofe,
I had therapy to treat my speech impediment. While it helped me in other areas, unfortunately it did not help me with my speech problem.
Later, in 2017, I found Lee’s book. The book gave me hope and some improvement. We had a few coaching sessions monthly or bimonthly. They helped but not enough. I guess I was not working hard enough. I couldn’t seem to learn the Crutches. After a while, I quit the sessions.
Then in 2020, I got in touch again with Lee and his methods again, this time with another one of Speech Anxiety Cures’ coaches, Javier (who had stopped stuttering by using Lee’s methods), and we had the sessions in Spanish, and that helped me greatly. He explained me in detail how to use the Crutches and how to practice them while reading aloud: one Crutch per page, as suggested. That helped me master the Crutches. After a few sessions and working diligently on the methods, I noticed how my speech began to improve. During this process, I had some setbacks, meaning that I had an incident while in the program, but it was because I was not using the Crutches correctly. If you master them and learn the rest of the methods, your speech will improve as mine did.
Now it’s been more than 5 weeks and no stranger has identified me as a stutterer, and the conversations with my family don’t cause me anxiety anymore, I feel free and relieved. If I have a stuttering threat, I will immediately use a Crutch. If you want to hear me speak a while ago, you can do it here: https://youtu.be/E5nXttIc2Kc. I know that I’m improving every week now.
Every time I speak fluently, I am more convinced that there is nothing wrong in my head. Stuttering is a habit that I learned and fed for so many years and now, I am working on mastering my mind and teaching myself to love to speak in all situations with everybody. The methods as presented in Lee’s book and in the videos and other programs on Speech Anxiety Cures (https://speechanxiety.com/) are truly life changing. I’ve stopped my stuttering and so have many others. You can see, hear and even question others who have stopped stuttering at SAC’s speech club (SpeechAnxietyMasters) that meets on Saturdays. You can read about it and watch the last meeting here: https://speechanxiety.com/speech-club/. Talks are given by others who have stopped stuttering, and the comments and questions by others are extremely helpful.
All of this enabled me to join the fluent word. I hope that you will too.
Claudia, USA, October, 2020