This is a happy day for me, because I’m staking my claim to fluency right here and now. My name is Clifton. I’m 24, and I live in Alabama, where I am a building inspector and a part time police officer.
I started stuttering around age 4, and nobody much cared or noticed until I reached my teens. Then, everyone noticed. Sometimes, I couldn’t get any words out at all. I had speech therapy at age 13, and it did help me feel better about myself, but I was no less embarrassed about my stuttering.
Growing up, I realized that the less that I talked, the less that I stuttered. So, being silent was my first line of defense. Over time, I was able to talk a bit more without stuttering, and I stumbled on a few of the methods that Lee explains his book. However, I still stuttered a good bit and I worried about it all the time. It still plagued my mind. I found Lee’s book late in 2019, and I loved it. It gave me hope and a belief that I could stop the stuttering once and for all. After I Skyped with Lee three times, I knew I no longer feared stuttering and I hadn’t had a “bad incident” (appearing disabled) that I could remember. It was time tell the world, “I beat it, and you can too.”
What I’d like to say to all PWS is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. You don’t have to stutter, no matter who tells you do. It’s just not true. As long as you believe that you can beat, really believe it, you can beat. Lee’s methods give you a ton of ways to stop stuttering. Get Lee’s incredible book and get to work. I’m still working on learning to love to speak in all situations, and I plan to coach for SAA one of these days, if they’ll let me. So, if you see a “Coach Clifton” that’ll likely be me.
CLIFTON, Alabama, March 2020
