Help for people who stammer
When I was growing up as a child, I would often think about
seeking help for my stammer. I did of course attend speech therapy
but with little or no success.
What I wanted was some real help from people who I actually
believed understood me. This was in my opinion the problem with
traditional speech therapists, they had not actually experienced
life as a person who had a stammer and therefore could not fully
appreciate the impact it has on one's life.
You can not blame them for that, in fact I am pleased for them
in a way, I would not wish a stammer on anybody.
Even though I wanted help, I felt unable to speak to my
parents to request it. It was not because they were bad parents it
was more because of my whole reluctance to even talk about the
stammer.
For many years I just hoped it would go away on its own
accord. I had heard a rumour that other people had just stopped
stammering because they had moved to a new area or a new school,
would this possibly happen for me?
The answer of course was a big fat NO! For me the stammer
seemed to become more severe the older I became. The more I
struggled to talk, the less confident I became. The less confident
I became, the more I would then stammer. As you can see it was one
big vicious circle.
In my late teens I discovered alcohol and was lucky enough to
date a couple of very nice girls. This helped me to gain in
confidence and eventually at the age of twenty-two I went in the
search of my own cure for stammering.
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