Hi, I’m Anand from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. I am 29 years of age and have stuttered since childhood on most words. Earlier I would always stutter at all situations. I would have to force my words out when I was trying to put forward my point in front of people in meetings, group discussions or often to my parents. My Strong arguments were played down because I could not communicate it powerfully and people would often not understand my point. I felt that I needed to work hard on my ideas as that was the only way to get my point communicated. I struggled hard but rarely saw success. I was often ridiculed to have stupid ideas just because I could not communicate well. This impacted my confidence as I would speak less in any meeting and even knowing a stronger point I would keep quiet or let someone else explain it and take away the credit for it, as I would not be able to put it forward. This resulted in shaping my personality as suppressed and not being able to grow out of my own shell.
I made several attempts to improve my stuttering on various occasions by one method or another. The improvement was always short-lived and I would re-lapsed into stuttering again. On one such attempt, I read a comment stating Lee’s methods. I was curious and went on to explore it. I got an audio book and heard it on a day’s long journey which opened up my eyes. He understood the exact issues and mentioned some logical approach to counter it.
Though I saw it being beneficial I was skeptical to pay for subscription to watch his course videos. One fine day, out of frustration of not being able to communicate, I hit the purchase button. Then begin the routine of watching a video every day. Looking back I feel that was the best investment of my life. I heard through all his video sessions, began reading aloud and using crutches when reading. I was still not getting on with the ASTs. That’s when I took the next step and opted for personal coaching. Heavens listened and I was assigned an Indian coach: Ms. Prathusha Ravi.
There was initial resentment to open up but she made it a breeze and I could quickly connect and share my concerns. Then started the process of being regular and rigorous. The practices in the session began to open up mental blocks.
Following her guidelines and being regular with the weekly sessions with my speech coach I am now able to say that my relapse has been quickly nipped in the bud, I have grown to be less harsh on myself, my self-esteem has changed track and is moving upwards and now I am able to speak fluently on most of the occasion without a stutter. Even when I sense I’m about to stutter, I’m able to think of a crutch and use it consciously to beat that stuttering.
Since I haven’t appeared speech disabled in over a month, my coach says I am a PWSS (Person Who Stopped Stuttering) now and the next goal is to love to speak at all the venues and I am sure that I will do so in times to come. I am very happy and excited to write this. I would love to thank Coach Lee for writing such an extraordinary book and WSSA for licensing Lee’s methods and making it available for all the PWS at a reasonable cost. You can probably beat it as I did, if join WSSA today at https://worldstopstuttering.org. If enough of us do, we’re going to eliminate stuttering from this world.
ANAND, India, March 2021
