My name is Kerry. My mother is a stutterer and I’ve stuttered since I was 6. When I was in school, stuttering would come in waves for me – I have periods of fluency and periods of speech disability (mostly after the summer break when I wasn’t speaking as much). I’m recently began my new career as a nurse, and my stuttering was the worst it has ever been. I refused to order through drive-thrus, speak on the phone, avoid certain jobs that required speaking on the phone, refrain from ordering an item on a menu that I would stutter on – the limitations on my life were endless! I would frequently use online apps to order food, or drive to offices to make my appointments – my speech disability was becoming quite a burden. I feared that my speech anxiety would threaten my new career, where I was required to call physicians to report critical changes in patient status, I feared I would be ridiculed for speech blocks or letter repetitions.
At the beginning of my journey, I consulted with a speech therapy clinic, but I wasn’t able to afford $5,700 for speech therapy as a new graduate. I decided to take things into my own hand, I found Lee‘s book, Stuttering & Anxiety Self-Cures” off a Reddit forum for stutters. I finished his book in 2 days, and I felt immediate relief knowing that this was a man that understood every nuance of stuttering and who was able to defeat it without traditional therapy. I began applying his methods and it helped me considerably. I decided to take my speech journey a step further, and email Lee for Skype sessions as he suggests in his book. We began Skyping every month and he explains his methods in more detail, I leave every Skype session feeling inspired and confident I can defeat my stuttering. I haven’t stuttered in a debilitating way in a month or so, I still have fears of stuttering (as I’ve been stuttering for over 25 years!), but Lee continue to support me and tell me that this will eventually fade.
I continue to work on my speech everyday which includes his methods of reading aloud daily (while practicing with the crutches) and 40-minute sessions of auto suggestions. My speech has improved drastically, and I no longer fear ordering at drive-thrus or picking up the phone to call someone. I work as a full-time nurse and I feel confident that I am going to able to have a great medical career (Lee’s auto-suggestions have also helped me with my positive self-talk!)
I found that using the crutches can be fun, and I’ve started to celebrate myself when I’ve used a crutch and avoided an awful stuttering episode. My speech is not perfect, nor do I expect it to be, but I am thrilled that I no longer have such extreme limitations on my life. With Lee’s methods my speech grows better and better everyday. If you stutter and are thinking about picking up this book, there is nothing to lose and so much to gain. You will not only gain tools to defeat your stuttering, but also tools to improve your overall life. I thank Lee and especially to Tasneem, who coached me a lot, for helping me and so many others. If you want to hear and see me speak, my Success Story is here: https://youtu.be/3N1bPr5VKRM.
Kerry, Ontario, December 2019
P.S. Four months later, Kerry confirmed that her speech was getting progressively better (https://youtu.be/LAThRhIvkxY)
P.S. Seven months after posting my Success Story, I have grown to truly enjoy speaking. I know that I can avoid any embarrassing speech incident anytime, anywhere. If you want to hear me speak now, go here: https://youtu.be/suC4p8qn_-Y.
