I’m Tamar. I’m 40 and I live in Georgia, near Russia. My first language is Georgian. I have a BA and an MA and have a managerial position with a government agency. My stuttering story is a common case. It starts from my childhood around 3 or 4 . I had been stuttering up to the age of 10 or 11. I had a few speech therapies in my early school years, but they were no help. Then around age 11, I miraculously stopped stuttering. I remember that day clearly, we had a school public event, where we had a famous poet invited and the students were supposed to recite rhymes by that poet. This was the day when I recited the rhyme perfectly fluently and since that on I had never stuttered in Georgian. I stress: IN GEORGIAN.
But seems the stuttering beast had madly fallen in love with me and hadn’t let me go. So that at the age of 18 when I entered the university, my stuttering habit returned, but this time in a foreign language, namely in English, but I’m sure I might stutter in any foreign language that I try to speak. We just had to learn English and speak it.
At this point, my stuttering journey has been perpetuated for over 20 years. Then, after 20 years I consulted 2 speech specialists, who assigned me with breathing exercises which were of little help. In addition both specialists were puzzled since they had never had a case like mine in their practice, that a person is 100 % fluent in the native tongue and only stutter in a foreign language. It was only after reading coach Lee’s book, that I found an answer to my puzzling case.
My speech therapist advised me that I should work on mental aspect more than my speech aspect but he didn’t tell me how I should do that. (I later learned how to do it from Lee’s book.) I also consulted a psychologist and he told me that he could provide assistance only in combination with a speech therapy.
So I went online and found Lee Lovett on YouTube, which led me to discover coach Lee’s program, book and methods. This was a huge breakthrough for me. It provided the combination of healing the mental aspect of stuttering in alignment with concrete speech techniques and methods. I think Coach Lee’s book and methods are the real deal due to this fact that it heals the whole person and takes care of various aspects of stuttering.
As for my progress so far, I’ve read Coach Lee’s book twice, and I have been doing my mind training twice a day, and trying to use some crutches and basically I stopped stuttering in English.
But I still feared a relapse. So, I joined the WSAA website and reached out to Coach Lee for assistance for private skype sessions. A few coaching sessions made me realize that I now could avoid appearing speech disabled in any language. That’s what coach Lee calls “first base”, not appearing speech disabled. That’s where I am right now, in English too.
So I no longer appear speech disabled, but I hope to continue my sessions with coach Lee and stop fearing a relapse and learn to really enjoy speaking anywhere.
I learned enough from Lee’s book to stop appearing speech disabled, but the private coaching has sealed my victory, as it provides insights and tips on how to teach myself to enjoy speaking and so to beat fear. All you stutterers out there should know that you don’t have to keep stuttering or fearing it for the rest of your life. Hundreds of us have beaten it now. You should be next!
Tamara, Georgia, Europe 08/2022
P.S. On July 3, 2024, two years after I wrote the above, I wrote Coach Lee to thank him and WSSA again, because I have never relapsed. I, too, live seamlessly in the fluent world. It makes life so much happier