My name is Noam, I’m 22 years old from Israel working in high tech. English is not my first language, but I write this in English anyway. I began stuttering at age 4, I considered myself a medium level stutterer. With my close family and close friends I stuttered much less than usual, I had the most problems dealing with authority figures and strangers. My stuttering is especially contains blocking with bad tics. I always felt that stuttering is stopping me from fulfilling my true potential.
At school my stuttering was the worst with the teachers, I avoided talking as much as I could, most of the teachers did not know how I sound like. When I was 14 years old I went to a speech therapist but I had so little self esteem that I giveuped before I even realy tried his methods. I stopped going to him after 5 sessions. Only after I finished high school my self esteem increased but still I felt a lot of anxiety about my speach, I was still afraid from talking with strangers and authority figures.
About 9 months ago I searched for a book to help me with my speaking, I found Lee’s book – “Stuttering and anxiety Self-Cures”, from the start I was amazed by the techniques he presented, I was determined to cure myself from stuttering. I started talking with Lee on skype approximatly 6 months ago, it was a long journey but gradually my speech become better and better.
Recently, I started searching for a new job. I felt like I aced every job interview i’v been at, I know that six months ago when I started that journey I could not get the results I’m getting now. I found a new job pretty easily ????
The techniques that helped me the most are: Reading auto suggestions twice a day once when I wake up in the morning and second before I go to sleep. Reading aloud every day and practice the crutches. My favorite crutches are skip first letter or syllable (1), insert alternate thoughts or sounds (4), tell a story about the word (5), voice modulation (8), link words together (10), and talk one thought at a time (11). I have not had speech incident where I appear disabled in over a month and I am feeling generally confident about my speech. If you want to hear me speak, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15e1ToyHDeM.
I thank Lee for being amazing mentor, coach and writer, he gave me an outstanding motivation to fight my stuttering and I’v done thanks to him. I can not thank him enough. He has proved that stuttering can be stopped and lots of us are stopping it just like he did. There’s no reason to keep stuttering now. Life is so much better without it.
NOAM, Israel, March 2019
