My name is Jay, and I’m from Los Angeles. I’m 36, married with a daughter. I work for CBS TV in the financial department, where I manage a group of financial analysts. I hold a B.A. and a MBA in finance.
My first memory of stuttering was at the age seven in school. When asked to read aloud, I started stuttering, and I couldn’t stop. The class laughed, of course, and no one offered to help. My stuttering grew progressively worse. My tendency was to repeat words and keep repeating them. The problem occurred mainly when asked to speak in any public venue, in job interviews, and sometimes socially with groups of as few as two other people. Then it spread to the phone. The phone became a disaster. In some cases, I suffered total blocks and just couldn’t talk at all. In phone interviews, I know that my stuttering alone kept me from getting a number of jobs for which I was otherwise qualified. Worse yet, my fear of stuttering kept me from even applying to jobs. The odd thing was that in other situations – specifically with family and friends – I didn’t stutter. So, the only people who heard me stutter were in my “public speaking” or on the phone and other pressured situations. I tried to hide it. So, I never had any therapy, but I bought a device, the “Casa Futura” (an $800 item) which shortened stutters during phone conversations. I didn’t like it at all and stopped using it. It felt like a half-measure solution that didn’t address the larger problem. With the arrival of my new-born daughter, I began to feel increasing pressure to do something about my stuttering. Not only do I desire to defeat stuttering for my career progression and becoming a better provider for my family, but I also want to show my daughter that you can overcome any obstacle with single-minded determination and hard work. At the age of 35, I finally publicly admitted that I had a stuttering problem when I told my doctor, an M.D. A few months later, I confessed to a second person, Lee.
At 35, the problem was growing worse; it was a speech disability, and I had to admit it, at least to myself. There’s shame with it; it’s not the kind of thing that you want to discuss with others. Besides, non-stutterers can’t understand the problem anyway. So, I went online to Amazon books, and, after reading reviews on many books, I bought Lee’s Stuttering & Anxiety Self-Cures. I couldn’t put it down. It gave me hope, and I began to feel the benefits of using the methods. I’ve read the book out loud cover to cover three times now.
I then emailed Lee and this led to Skyping with him, which I began doing two months ago. In my early Skypes with Lee, I stuttered heavily. I intensified my efforts at reading aloud and doing multiple, 20 minute auto suggestion treatments daily. I even recorded my auto suggestions so that I could replay them in a loop during sleep. In our Skypes, we practiced using the “Crutches”, which are simply techniques that helped me focus on my message rather than on planning my words. The more that I practiced them, the less that I stuttered. After seven Skypes, I had not had a “detectable stuttering incident” in weeks. That is, I was not stuttering noticeably anywhere, even on the phone! Lee and I agreed that I had passed SAA’s Self-Cure Test. I still have stuttering thoughts, but not many, perhaps five minutes an hour versus 30-45 minutes in the old days, and the key point is that I am NOT stuttering enough for anyone to notice.
How did I stop stuttering? Read Lee’s book and Skype with him or one of the other self-cured stutterers at SAA, and you’ll understand. It’s all about mind training, mind control and dictating your thoughts. It takes practice, concentration, determination, will power and above all persistence. I’m convinced that most can make Lee’s methods work.
As for me, my future is brighter than it has EVER been. I do not fear a relapse. I know too many ways to avoid stuttering now. I’m now expanding the mind control methods that I‘ve learned from Lee’s book to the rest of my life, because now I know what Lee means when he says, “Stuttering has been a great blessing in my life.” That’s where I’m going with it. In closing, I stress that, contrary to the long held views of the medical community, stuttering IS curable. The biggest favor you can do yourself is to join the self-cured stutterers at SAA and begin your self-cure – all at zero cost to you.
JAY from L.A., November, 2017
