My name is Jason Ewing, and this is my story about stuttering. I’m not a writer, but these are my thoughts as spoken to Lee, and I edited the written words, and I approve them as they are written below.
I’m 42, married with two children, and live in Bardstown, Kentucky. I work in a distillery. I have been a severe stutterer from age 3. I stuttered so badly in school that I pushed my desk forward a foot or so every time I spoke. They gave me therapy every day in school, through all my school days, and when I got home I had even more therapy every day at home, from different therapists. By the time I finished school, and my any years of my therapy ended, the therapists told me they had done what they could and I’d just have to live with it and that’s what I’ve done ever since. Over the years, my stuttering lessened a little but not that much. Under pressure I still pretty much locked up.
In August 2016, I got Lee’s book and read it and then I studied it. I found his email address in it and I emailed him and he replied almost immediately. So, in September 2016, we began Skyping every week for an hour. I began to improve so much every week that my wife began referring to Lee as “Doctor Lee”. We talked about every method in his book and how to apply it, and I worked learning the methods, and I worked hard and I still do. From last September to now, with very few exceptions, I read aloud an hour or so every day, and I interview myself in the mirror, as Lee suggested. By doing this, my mind hears more fluency from me in a week than it did in the prior ten years. (In the first couple months of Skyping, as Lee suggested, I tried to talk less under pressure to avoid creating any more new stuttering memories than necessary.) While reading aloud, I also practice putting as much feeling in my reading as I can, and this helps teach me to concentrate on the thoughts I’m speaking and not on any of the words. While reading, I also practice using Lee’s Crutches, which are ways of avoiding threatened stutters as they arise. Then, also, every day, I do give myself Auto Suggestion Treatments (ASTs) and in those ASTs I plant positive thoughts about my speech and about me and about my life. I do these things faithfully, every day, or close to it, and guess what? It works!!! I stutter less and less and less. No one, who didn’t know me before, now thinks that I stutter.
As my stuttering steadily declined since I read Lee’s book in August 2016, it then fell to near zero since we started Skyping in September 2016. By early this year, each week, I had some new, excellent progress to report: For the first time in my life, I was able to order a meal in a restaurant. For the first time in my life, I could talk to my parents without stuttering. For the first time, I could talk to strangers in public places and say my own name without stuttering. And then came my biggest achievement: For the first time, I could talk to my bosses at work without stuttering. I told Lee all these things, and he beamed as if he was the one accomplishing them.
Then I also remember the day I told Lee, “I don’t even think about stuttering much anymore.” He told me later that hearing me say that gave him more joy than anything he had ever done related to his stuttering book; he threatened to kiss me, and he’s straight.
In March 2017, Lee and some of his other self-cured PWS decided to form Speech Anxiety Anonymous, a charity to help other PWS self-cure, inviting PWS from all over the world to seek help from self-cured stutterers, and Lee invited me to be a co-founder of SAA. I was thrilled to accept, because I know the pain of stuttering to the core, every fiber of agony that it can force on people, and it can destroy anyone. I lived with it for almost 40 years before finding Lee’s book. So, now, if I can help even one PWS overcome that, I will feel joy beyond any words I can write here. If you would like to view a video of my success story – https://vimeo.com/388910437/ae70305e9e
(P.S. Jason self-cured in December 2016, although SAA did not yet exist to post his Success Story. We Skyped with him twice in 2017, once in 2018, and again on January 9, 2019 (two years AFTER his self-cure), and he has suffered NO relapses and has not had any bad incidents (appearing speech-disabled) since a month or more before he posted his SS in 2016. You can watch his Jan. 2019 Success Video here: https://vimeo.com/389288221/a6f5420978
P,P.S. In April 2019, Jason re-confirmed his fluency and again in August 2021, when Jason emailed this to us: “My FIFTH Anniversary of Fluency. . .I’m just reminiscing about the event that changed my life for the better forever. August 16, 2016, when I discovered your book and began Skyping with you [Lee]. From that day I knew that something big was about to happen. I couldn’t talk at all at work and did my best to hide and avoid saying anything to anyone. My job has grown into radio-dispatch and constant telephone work and making plant-wide announcements. I simply do not stutter. I have watched your work on SAA and on World Stop Stuttering Association and have watched many of your videos. You have given your PWS the tools to elevate their lives. You are a truly hero to everyone, including me, who has come to you for help. I and my family thank you with all our hearts.”
Jason Ewing, Kentucky
