As long as I can remember, I’ve always feared speaking. The possibility of stuttering in front of people, of humiliating myself, have always been rambling in my mind. I’ve always been very worried of how people perceived my speech, especially when meeting new people, at work, etc. If you’re a stutterer, you know what I’m talking about.
All my life I’ve avoided any kind of pressured speaking situation, I didn’t want to embarrass myself. If I knew I was going to have problems, I directly avoided speaking. But this constant anxiety bothered me more than I am able to express here. It held me back from doing so many things… So many things fluent people could do easily, effortlessly….
My name is Nathanial, I’m 38 years old, and I’ve been stuttering, especially when speaking to strangers and those I perceived as authority figures, since I was around the age of 4.
I work as a steward in the UAE. One of the things I love about my job is travelling, of course. But on the other side, the main downside is dealing with strangers 24/7, and, most of all, speaking through the interphone, to all the passengers of the plane. And I have no way to avoid those situations.
The COVID-19 pandemic situation has made my anxiety rise even more. All these factors combined with the fact that some months ago I had a bad incident, appearing speech disabled, at work, forced me to make the decision of doing something about my speech. It was time to get rid of this speech madness I’ve been suffering for so many years. I decided I had enough. And I found Speech Anxiety Cures (SAC) and the Lovett Method. Lee’s Stuttering & Anxiety Self-Cures made so much sense to me, how he described stuttering, the Crutches, everything. The book itself proved to be a huge help, as it provided me with the tools to deal with more stressful situations. But I still needed a bit of extra help to master these tools.
That’s when I decided to become a member of SAC. The video courses, the videos of other coaching sessions, it all helped me understand the method much more clearly, and know how to apply it in real situations. And of course, the 3 free coaching sessions with Javier, one of the coaches. I’ve only needed the 3 free coaching sessions included in the Stuttering membership, along, of course, with working daily on my speech for a few months to get the job done.
So, where am I now? I know I no longer appear speech disabled. I know how to avoid that from happening. But I still suffer speech anxiety in some situations. The good news is that I can get rid of that too, just like I did with my stutters. Is my speech flawless? Not always. But that’s how everybody speaks anyway. I am going to keep on working on learning to love to speak and try to improve my speech as much as possible, knowing that we are all human beings, and that perfect speech is an impossible goal for all of us.
And as a conclusion to my Success Story: I am not the only one who has made it this far. A lot of other people, more than 150, have made it, some of them have become great speakers, some of them even help others stop stuttering, just like they did. Some of them used to have a much more severe case than mine. If we have been able to do it, you can do it too. What are you waiting for? SAC is the only place you can get access to a group of ex-stutterers and those fast becoming ex-stutterers.
Nathanial, UAE, May 2021.