How Stuttering Affected My Life

I developed a speech impediment (a stutter) when I was four years of age.

To say that I hated the stutter would be an understatement, it had a very damaging impact on my whole life and had an extremley damaging affect on my overall confidence.

Making a phone call, answering the telephone, trying to order a drink at the bar, socialising, introducing people and attending interviews were just a few areas that were to become a real choir for me.

I often dreamt of what it would be like to be fluent. I would not accept what various so called specialists were attempting to tell me when the stated that there was not a cure for stuttering. I could talk without the slightest hint of a stutter, so why did they ever think that I would listen to their negative views.

The stutter seemed to make me accept second best in life, this is something that I found very frustrating as I knew I could achieve so much more.

My goal in life was to achieve fluency, not partial fluency but total fluency.

I managed to attain my goals when I was aged twenty-two. Eighteen years of stuttering was eighteen years to many for me.

As a career I now help other people to achieve fluency, I am now thirty-four years of age (as at 2008) and have helping people who have a stutter for the last twelve years.

Steve Hill