My phobia of speaking
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010I developed a stutter or as some people call it a stammer in childhood. I have spoken to my family regarding this and they have confirmed that I developed it when I was a young boy.
Despite regular speech therapy over the next fourteen years my stutter became worse. I remember quite clearly the fear of having to read out from a book in class. On entering the classroom I would notice that there was a reading book on each and every desk. I would start to panic straight away believing the teacher would make me read a paragraph. Just waiting my turn, knowing that it would result in yet another one of those stuttering moments would be torture.
Socialising with friends was not exactly easy for me either. I am fairly sure that the majority of people enjoy going out with their friends and even look forward to the prospect. I was some what different – I would dread it.
My worst area of speech was using the telephone. To say that the telephone was something I would avoid using would have been something of an understatement – luckily my father made the majority of the calls on my behalf. Some people may say that this was not exactly helping me in the long run. This may be correct and I was very grateful at the time.
After leaving school, I started to attend interviews to try to find employment including a very bad one at a business cost cutting company. I would normally stutter more when under pressure or when meeting new people and both of these situations are prevalent in an interview situation. I would normally arrive at the interview very tired after a lack of sleep through the stress of it all and I have to say found it very difficult to convince any employer to take me on.
As you can no doubt imagine I was eager to find a way of stopping stuttering and I did eventually attain fluency after purchasing a seventy minute self-help stuttering therapy DVD from the UK. I now live happy and successful life and as a career I now I work for a DVD authoring company.
I hope other people who have a stutter can gain inspiration from my story – stuttering can be overcome and do not listen to those who say otherwise.
