Success! In Spite Of (or maybe because of?) Stuttering - Personal Stories

Robert's Story: Frustration Gave Me Strength to Prove Myself

As far as I can remember, for the whole of my childhood, I have been stuttering, possibly since the age of 3. According to my mother my stuttering was a consequence of great fear, which expressed itself through the many nightmares I had when I was a small child.

Before I started school I had a lot of friends. We played and had fun. But my primary school years were rather sad. I was plagued by teasing at school. Neither the teachers nor the higher authority of the school supported me. Those schooldays were very frustrating and emotionally a very heavy burden. Due to these unbearable tortures at school, I decided to quit school at the age of 14. School left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Although I was a good student, I simply could not tolerate it that people were laughing at me all the time.

However, in my opinion, this frustration gave me the strength to prove myself to my relatives and friends. I would show them that I was a capable person!

I developed myself through self study and vigilance and started to gain confidence as I went along my own way. I made new friends, who accepted me for what I was. During the weekends my parents allowed me to go out and my friends and I went out motorcrossing in the claypits. We sometimes cycled with more than 10 friends to neighboring dances and pubs. I met some girls and at the age of 17 got to know the woman I married at the age of 21. We raised a family of two daughters who are now also married and who have given us 5 adorable grandchildren.

Let me go back in time, to the point where school left me with an image of me standing at the edge of society. I felt worthless. Slowly I gained confidence through self development. At the age of 18 I asked my parents to give me a loan of 500.000 Bef (equal now to about 12.500 Euro) and I set up my own business.

The amount of money did not scare me a lot, I had the drive to show everyone what my capabilities were. I felt smart, I could reason enough so I could be an entrepreneur. So I started up my own small scale business in the region in technical material. I went out to visit customers, made my purchases and took a great deal of time for market research.

In a short time, I traveled to neighboring countries to check out the products sold there and I got a good picture of the potential market, learning the needs of the customers.

After a lot of math, I calculated that it would be possible to produce these products myself. I started my first successful production unit and we needed to add more units soon after.

In the meanwhile my children and sons in law are also busy in the company. Due to all the efforts, our company has grown to become marketleader in Belgium and on the European front we are also becoming an important player. Currently we have production units in Italy, India and China. The Main office is in Belgium where everything is coordinated. After 35 years of being a businessmen and entrepreneur I can look back at my professional and personal life and I find success.

As you can read, a person who stutters can also have a beautiful and rich life.

Not everyone may feel this way, but I personally feel now that all the teasing and the bad luck during my youth, made me stronger.

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Tony's Story: Her Narrow-Mindedness Became My Inspiration

At 45 years old, I have stammered for as long as I can remember. I m left handed too, which means that in the 1600s I would certainly have been burned at the stake for my apparent "sorcery".(1) Fortunately, we live in more enlightened times now or do we?

In 1993, I had the privilege of writing in the journal "Speaking Out" about my experiences of stammering in the workplace.(2) Up to that time, I had blatantly been denied promotion in the service industry because of my stammer, then demoted when it re-appeared after being in remission for a while. I was not imagining any conspiracy theories; my employers told me quite clearly that stammering and a management position could not mix. This well known international organisation (still in business today) felt that my stammer would present a poor image of the company to its customers. So aged 29, I was removed from my junior executive position and given a job as an installation technician. My salary was halved, and future prospects looked distinctly bleak. Stammering at job interviews made it difficult for me to find alternative work, so I stayed on until my local office was closed down, resulting in redundancy. But things began to improve, and in my 1993 article, I wrote about a new opportunity that I had been offered within the NHS. Unbelievably, I was successful at interview, despite stammering so severely that I was practically incomprehensible.

Career-wise, a completely fresh start was required. I had been given a good job in the NHS, helping GPs and other health care professionals to evaluate the quality of their work. Having left school half-way through A levels, I had no real qualifications, which unfortunately limited any future prospects. My line manager, however, suggested that I might like to undertake a certificate in health services management, and provided some funding as well as protected time to study. My job gradually became more interesting, and I was eventually made a manager. In a management reshuffle (for which the NHS is still famous), my job was transferred over to the public health department. Unexpectedly, it turned out that completion of the management certificate made me eligible to read part-time for a Master of Public Health degree (MPH), and I was again encouraged and helped to enrol. This introduced me to the world of medical research and epidemiology, which I found utterly fascinating. Upon graduating with my MPH, the university offered me a job as a researcher carrying out systematic reviews of evidence for new medical technologies. This work gave me some enormously valuable practical skills in epidemiology.

I subsequently applied for a position at a different university, involving the development and management of a new MPH course, and to my amazement was offered it. Now, being a stammering NHS manager was one thing, but as you may imagine, the prospect of becoming a stammering lecturer fell way outside my comfort zone. Calling my new boss to accept the post, I protested "but my stammer - how will I get on with the lectures?" "Don't worry", she replied, "it's rather endearing" To be honest, I did not feel sufficiently competent to take on this challenge, but with hard work and plenty of luck, a course was successfully launched. With regard to the stammer, the only option was to buckle down and get on with it. So I informed my first lecture theatre full of students that some unexpected gyrations or facial contortions may occur, and these would be caused by a stutter rather than any other habit. And so for several years I stuttered profusely during lectures, but no-one appeared to laugh, and amazingly no complaints were made.

Being a public health academic was all very well, but I felt a need to update my practical skills to inform the academic activities. An opportunity to re-join the NHS in my current role as a specialist in public health presented itself, a job I am enjoying very much. I am also able to combine public health practice with acadaemia, thanks to a professorship in epidemiology that I now hold.

So installation technician to professor - that's not a bad career progression, is it? Of course, none of this would have happened without the many opportunities I have been given by people who saw through the stammer and believed in me.

By far the most important event since 1993 is that I have become a father, and have two gorgeous and exuberant children aged 6 and 11. They find the stutter a little quirky, but do not make fun of it. One intriguing point is that my family and several students tell me that they no longer notice my stammer. Indeed, it is significant that I have never come across anyone within either the NHS or acadaemia who appears to have a problem with my stammer a very different situation to my experience in industry.

So what's the point of this article? To make me sound like a lucky chap? Not really. The point is that we stammerers all have potential, but people sometimes want to make us feel inferior. When I was 18, a women, whose rudeness I am told was justified by her occupying a position of trust at work, told me that with a stammer I would could never aspire to anything beyond a basic manual job. I have taken pride in spending the last 27 years defying her! Although these individuals would use their narrow-mindedness to deny us our deserved success, we must believe in ourselves and be strong in our determination to break through these barriers. Then, with luck, we can triumph and conquer the flames of bigotry.

This article is taken from :-

http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad9/papers/stewart9.html

6th meeting of Jammu SHG

On 15th Nov, we had our 6th meeting of Jammu SHG. This meeting was attended by three members which started at 11 am and went on to 1:30 pm. According to the Photograph, starting from the left, it was Rajesh ,me and Aditya.



We started this meeting with a lil bit of Bouncing and Voluntary stammering.On our way to our meeting place ,We saw a guy sitting on a bench at a distance. Aditya went to him and asked him to take our photograph using some Bouncing or Voluntary stammering. This time Aditya was quick and confident.

Then we sat at our usual meeting place and discussed about stammering in our life. Rajesh said that today he has achieved so much in his life just bcoz of his stammering. He said that instead of being here, he would ve been somewhere else doing wrong things like most of the young people are doing for example taking drugs or wasting time & money by going after girls etc.And I totally agreed with him. Bcoz I think that stammering makes us much more Hard working, Determined and above all a kind hearted person who understand the pain of someone else.

Then we discussed about a movie called "front of the class". In this movie I learned loads of things that were even missing in "The unspeakable". This movie is based upon a true story of a Guy named Brad who is having Tourettes syndrome.
Tourettes is also a sort of speech impediment in which the person keeps on making funny sounds even when he is sitting quitely.They have shown a lot of emotions and struggle that Brad goes through .He wants to be a Teacher but gets rejected everytime he goes for an interview.
But he keeps on his fighting spirit and never lets Tourettes to win. After appearing for more than 25 interviews, he gets a job as a teacher in a school.And in the end, he gets an Award of "The best gifted teacher of the year".In his last speech he says that "I got support from My family,my school family,friends and my students. But My best teacher and constant companion was my Tourettes who taught me lots of things.I wouldnt have be here without my Tourettes".
OMG Brad and Rajesh are having similar kindaa thinking.

Then we called Sachin sir on his phone and talked to him for about half an hour(28:10 exact). Sachin sir motivated all of us and also cleared many of our doubts.We also talked to JP and Romi.Romi is from Mumbai and he came to samagra to work on his speech.
He is at the right place. Nothing can be better than Samagra ashram.

After that, on our way back, we once again asked a guy to take our photograph using bouncing technique. Then we started asking him few questions about stammering. But he was a bit confused and said that he had no clue why do people stammer. He was feeling a lil bit uncomfortable.So instead of explaining him why it happens, we thought to leave him alone. It really looked a bit strange to him . Three stammering guys standing around him and firing questions. It was a lil funny.

An important observation...!!

Today I was interacting with some of the guests in a party. One of them asked me about the college from where I did my graduation.And believe me, i was not able to speak out the word "Rayat", thatz my college. I was doing "Rrrrrrrrrrrrr". So this means that I am having difficulty in speaking out the letter "R". I don't think so. I already spoke the word "R", so the difficulty was not with this word.

The main problem was the sound "A". Bcoz i already said "R"... but the rest of the word was not coming out i.e. "ayat".This means the problem is with the letter "a" and not "r".

So in order to overcome this problem , I am practicing by saying the rest of the word i.e. "aaaayat" again & again. And when i am comfortable with that word, just add "r" before that .So this becomes "Raaaayat".
There you go..........

Hrithik - A True Hero........!!!

Whenever someone used to say that Hrithik had a stammer, I used to think that may be he must have stuttered till the age of 5 or 6 and then with the help of some speech therapy, got over that...but this is not the case. What I learned in the program was completely different. Here is a man who is a Bollywood superstar, super busy and still works for one hour on his speech daily. When the host asked him, for how long did he had this problem, he said since age 6 to till date, which was really surprising to everybody. But he has accepted for what he is and has not stopped at that but has worked hard to achieve whatever he wanted to be in his life. He said he had no option, either he wanted to become an actor or die trying becoming one.

When the host asks him to share one of the embarrassing moments due to his stammer..he shares only one, but then continues with really amazing fact that he always wanted to become an actor; Whenever someone asked him what he wanted to become, he used to say a-a-ac-tor! So how can someone who can't say the word 'actor' did become an actor! The turning point in his life came when once while walking on beach, he saw a group of youngsters doing somersaults and he too wanted to learn it. He tried and tried and finally managed to do it after a lot of practice and struggle,and this thought struck him : Why can't he do the same with his speech!
Other than that he had all the experiences which any person who stammers has gone through..like not being able to order food in a restaurant on his first date. Once he was not confident enough to say the word 'Dubai' on stage while receiving the award for the movie-'Kaho na payar hai' and had to practice it for some time and as he said, finally took the "leap". Just compare his motivation level to any of us and ask yourself: are we ready to work so hard..Are we ready to let go of our lame excuses like shortage of time, family reasons etc.

I know I may be sounding too harsh or strict or preacher-like but thats what these are. How can one reach office or an examination center or to a cinema theatre on time even during rains but cancel their plans to go to self help group meetings to practice their speech goals due to the same? Just be true to yourself and ask what do you want out of life and go ahead and live your life the way you want. All the best!

Hrithik said that he started it right from the scratch like A,B,C,D..........so on. Then he used to practice all the sounds of every letter or alphabet. for eg : all the sounds of the letter A.(aaaaaaa,aaeeeeee,aiiiiiiii etc). After that he used to combine the letters and practice them. Like, if we stammer on the words P or B or T etc. then practice it like paaaaaaa,peeeeeee,poooooo,puuuuuu for P and similarly for rest of them also.

If someone missed that show, you can watch it on youtube. Here are the links :-

http://www.youtube.com/watchv=p7Bz_S1uBEA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=rL51RXmZe6o&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=oxkMYBiUZ2k&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=ZgWyz52s8Hw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=syz3Heqf1OE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=DkoAxHVleNg&feature=related

This post is written by "Jai Prakash Sunda".He is also a recovering stammerer and Co-ordinator of Pune SHG.

Overcoming your fears........!!!

Usually most of the speech therapists only focus on some techniques like Bouncing,Prolongation etc. and that also in clinic environment. They make the stammerers to practice in their own comfort zones.But the real challange is to extend our comfort zone and face the new challanges which were just like a night mare for a stammerer.

So today Dr. Sachin took us to a Hospital today and we were made to come out of our comfort zone and face our night mares. At first ,we were made to talk to some patients or their relatives who were sitting in the waiting room. I was really scared at that moment. we were suppose to talk to them and ask them about their purpose of coming here and to also tell them that we are working on our speech.we talked to 6 to 7 people out of them 4 were ladies. I always hesitated to talk to any lady, so I was very much nervous at that time too. But after talking to them I felt that there is nothing like a night mare or what ever you call it. They were really understanding our problem and were very cooperative also.

The next task was to go and talk to the Supritendent of that hospital. When we went into the office ,I saw that the Supritendent is also a Lady.We talked to her and told her about ourselves and what ever techniques we learnt here. She was very happy and also said that the techniques that you pws are using must be used by every person bcoz it sounds so Cool and stylish. Then the 3rd task was to go to different windows at the hospital and just ask them something using Bouncing technique. And I think this was the best part of the day . We were enjoying bouncing and asking questions . So overall it was a gud experience .

Thanks to Dr. Sachin for making us to do these things and helping us in overcoming our fears.

What is Acceptance.....???

Since when I was a child ,I never realized that this stammering will cause me so much trouble in my future. Like when I went for any vivas ,I used to prepare for it very hard and my frnds just didnt bother about vivas.They use to say that we can just say what ever we want .Its just a kindaa interview.So just go there and say something and you'll get good marks.

At that time I realized that I was different from them.I can't just keep on saying anything ,bcoz it was difficult for me even to speak my name.So when the teacher used to ask me question during VIVAS, I was always knowing the answer to that question but I was not able to move my lips. So the teacher thought that Manpreet is not knowing the answer and She used to pass that question to the next person. I was just like a dumb statue there.Because I was afraid that if I gave the answer and I stammer, then all my frnds sitting beside me will make fun of me due to my stammer and I will feel bad about it. I thought that it was better to keep my mouth shut. Here I was doing the wrong thing.
I was hiding my stammer from all of them .And bcoz of this mentality, I always avoided to speak and stop attending even my family parties.

So Acceptance means that we have to Accept our stammer and in others words feel gud about our stammer and have a positive attitude towards it. The outcome of this is that our speech becomes effortless and quite smooth and There is no struggle in our mind and no two thoughts that shall I speak or not.

My Experience......!!!

As u knw that there is no 100% cure for ur stammer. So we can not say that he/she is an ex-stammerer. Although we can overcome this problem atleast 98% or 99% in some cases also.
Stammering is 80% psychological and 20 % physical. So the 80% psycological cure is for sure and the remaining 20 % depends upon ur speech muscles and how we can control them occasionally.
This 20% physical cure can come by practicing the techniques like Bouncing,Prolongation,Easy onset,Cancellation or whatever u ve learnt. But just believe in what u do. The most important factor in this physical condition is "Slow rate of speech". If u try to control you speech and speak slowly ,then out of this 20%, u have cured 15%.

The 80% psychological cure can come by "Accepting" that u stammer.Remember "Acceptance" is the only way with which u can cure ur 80% stammer.It means that we need not to hide our stutter.Just go out and talk about our stutter to anybody openly.Stammering or stuttering is not a crime . So what are we hiding it from. It is something given to us by GOD, so why to hide it.All these points again point towards Acceptance. So that is the key.

Bcoz when u Accept that you stammer and are not ashamed of it, the internal struggle that always keeps on emerging in our mind is eliminated and now u have no fear to speak out something even in the difficult situations.Believe me ...I have tried this thing and with in 1 month I am observing something gud in ma speech and that is fluency.

So the choice is urs........ all of you can do this and just try to put all these techniques in ur day to day life. Even if u stutter at the initial stage , you shouldn,t be ashamed of it. Just try to control ur emotions and walk one step ahead of ur emotions.

A perfect example of controlling ur Emotions is :----
It is often observed in stammerers that if today they were able to speak fluently with some person in a difficult situation, they will feel very gud and will be happy on that particular day.And if, on the next day they stammer a lot even in an easy situation ,they will feel very bad and think that why GOD gave this problem to me and there whole day goes very depressing and unhappy.Now here ur Emotions are controlling you. But you also know that this stammer is not ur fault.It occurs at odd times when no one is expecting it. So to control ur stammer, u need to control ur Emotions first.And just act normally when any of these situations occurs and try to tell urself "that atleast u spoke and completed ur sentence". Bcoz a non-stammerer can never be so courageous and dedicated as far as our speech is concerned.

So just cheer up and say it to urself that "if so many of the stammerers are able to gain flueny , why can't I.....???"

You can and you always will..........just try this........