I’m 21 and a college student. I live in Oklahoma. My name is Ingrid. I began stuttering at age 5. That was the year my mother died.
I grew up with the idea that stuttering was permanent, as I had been told it was. I had a grandfather who stuttered severely and died stuttering severely. When I developed a mild-stutter around the age of 5, my family assumed I had inherited the “stutter gene”; my fate was decided.
Lee Lovett was able to change this mentality. Lee teaches that all stutter-ers allow themselves to stutter, which turns out to make perfect sense to anyone with a stutter! We pile our minds with negative thoughts, we hesitate, we ignite fear before we speak, we are warped in a never-ending cycle of fear of stuttering = more stuttering, which snowballs. Most importantly, we KNOW this, but we still believe we will stutter forever and that there is no cure. After reading Lee’s book and implementing a couple of his suggestions, my stutter was reduced by 50%.
We Skyped for a few months, but we haven’t Skyped now in about six months. I have kept applying Lee’s methods, and I haven’t really had any bad incidents in months. I still have some fears, but I’m not stuttering. What I want to say to other PWS is that Lee’s book is great, and his methods do work. They take some work, but it’s worth it. Read his book and apply his methods. You have an entire new life to gain. Stuttering does not have to be your life curse.
Ingrid, Oklahoma, November 2019