I am Apoorv. I’m 30 and live in India. Hindi is my first language. I have a Masters in Chemical Enginering. I began stuttering at age 8 and until I began using Lee Lovett’s methods, I was stuttering around one-third of my words. I also avoided looking in people’s eyes, as it increased my stuttering. As a result, I had constant negative thoughts and depressing mental images of stuttering. I had many sessions of therapy in India. These focused on breathing and didn’t help. My biggest problem was first feared words, and breathing didn’t help with them.
Last spring, I found Lee’s book. I read the 2nd Edition, and it helped a great deal. I then read the 3rd Edition and it was many times better. My stuttering decreased 30% or so just from reading his books. In his book, he invites readers to email him. So, I did. To my surprise, he replied and we began Skyping. He urged me to memorize the Crutches. I found Crutch 4 (inserting a word or sound and jamming the feared word into them) and Crutch 9 (extreme pronunciation) the most helpful. After about six Skype, I had stopped stuttering; that is, I hadn’t had a “bad incident” (appearing speech disabled) in over a month. That was probably six months ago.
My fears of stuttering haven’t died completely yet, but they are much less. The main point to me is that I know Lee’s Crutches well enough to avoid appearing to be a stutterer. Lee still urges me to “stay on the program”, by which he means to keep reading aloud daily and doing my daily mind-training treatments and using the Crutches, when needed, to avoid having a bad incident.
I want to teach myself to love to speak in all venues, and I haven’t done that yet. I plan to participate in Lee’s online SpeechMasters Club (https://worldstopstuttering.org/speech-club/) and work on that. Lee says that I should also just push myself to talk 10% more under pressure than I’m comfortable doing; then, after a while, I’ll expand my comfort zone to the maximum.
I can’t tell you how much Lee’s book and his coaching helped me. I never thought that I could stop stuttering, but I did. Lee coached me for free as well. I can never thank him enough. I’m not the only one. If you go to Lee’s Speech Anxiety Anonymous (https://speechanxietyanonymous.org/), there are around 100 Success Stories like this to read. They are compelling and prove over and over that his methods work.
Just this month, Lee licensed his methods to a company (World Stop Stuttering Association or WSSA), which is staffed with ex-stutterers who beat it using his methods, and that company has developed a whole program of courses, blogs, forums, videos, etc., all to make his methods easier to understand and apply (https://worldstopstuttering.org/) If you stutter or resist speaking, just know that you can beat it. Lee’s methods work, and he is even still coaching for free as I write. It’s time to push stuttering off the planet. Lee and WSSA call it their “Cause”. What a great idea. Let’s do it.
Apoorv, India, May 2020
