Stuttering is a form of speech impediment that is known to affect approximately one percent of the adult population in the UK. Also referred to as stammering, this condition is more common in men for reasons that are not fully understood. Treatments for stuttering have improved over the last few years and no longer just rely on the tradtional forms of speech therapy.

Around a decade ago, a visit to the local speech therapist seemed to be the only option available for people who had a stutter. The main reason to attend speech therapy was the hope that it would provide some form of fluency and a potential cure for stuttering.

These hopes would basically be dashed after just one visit. Instead of explaining a treatment program that if followed with hard work and determination would lead to fluency, the speech therapist would state that they did not believe that there was a cure for a stutter and that the person should accept that they had the stutter. What great advice!

I am somebody who had a stutter and I went home feeling disgusted with the speech therapy that I was given. What I could not understand, at that tender age of just eight, was why at times I could talk very well when at other times I would struggle to say a single word. Surely if somebody could find an answer to this then a cure would not be far away. The big frustration was the fact that nobody was seemingly looking for a stuttering cure and that they had all just accepted that it was not possible to overcome it.

Despite the negative attitude that I was hearing from the speech therapists, I did feel that I had hope. I knew that these speech therapists had never suffered with a stutter and that in reality they could not fully understand what it was like to have this form of speech impediment, there is only so much that you can learn via a book.

After living life with a stutter for around eighteen years, I decided to attempt to search for my own cure for stuttering and I have now been fluent for the last eleven years.