Stuttering is a speech disorder where the individual’s natural flow of speech is disrupted by frequent repetitions or prolongations of certain sounds, syllables and words. Sometimes, this makes it impossible to even start a word. A person who stutters can also experience rapid eye blinks, trembling lips and jaw and sometimes, the upper body. There is no certain cause of stuttering but experts say things can get worse because of stress. According to them, one of the best ways on how to stop stuttering is to learn how to manage stress.

I have a classmate once in elementary grade who stutters when he tried to speak in front of the class when the teacher tells us to do so. He will start to tremble, fix his eyes on the floor, both hand clasped against each other, he starts to talk but stutters and before you know it, he will break down in tears. Now, after 25 years, we met again in our general alumni homecoming and we were all surprised that he doesn’t stutter anymore. He had found a way to stop stuttering and we were even more surprised when he told us he just learned how to do that just a few months back.

My goodness, I thought, how can he ever get through life when he was stuttering all these years? Well, I don’t know the answer but I’m sure was glad to find out that he had learned how to stop stuttering and according to him, he had done it in a natural and safe way- no drugs. He added he had found a remedy online. He related to us how he had learned of this Stop Stuttering System, a combination of a book and a video course and how it had helped him get rid of his problem the soonest possible time. We were even more surprised when he went onstage and read a letter from one of our dear teachers congratulating us.

I 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. Walking into the classroom, for example an English lesson, I would see that there was a book on each 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. Most people look forward to their Friday or Saturday night outs with their mates. For me though this was not the case, I would be counting down the days as the week went on.

My worst area of speech was using the telephone. I certainly had a phobia to the phone and was quite lucky as my father would make a lot of my calls for me. 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.

This was my history of having a stutter and as you can see it was to have a happy ending - stuttering can be overcome with hard work and dedication.

I once had a neighbour who was about sixty-five. She was such a negative person, very rarely smiled and seemed to moan about almost everything. She is called Nancy.

When I first moved to this particular area, I tried to make friends with the people who lived close to me, this was fairly easy as I sold Tesco Voucher Codes as well as offering a DVD duplication service for a living which was a kind of excuse for talking to them. When I first met Nancy she kept saying how ill she felt and about how her back was playing her up. I went away from this meeting feeling quite sorry for Nancy.

Around two weeks later I bumped into Nancy again. I asked her in a very positive and upbeat way, how she was. This was something which I later regretted asking as she then started wittering on about the many problems that she seemingly had in life. She did not have one happy thing to say. Over the next few years of living by Nancy, I actually went out of my way to avoid her.

I have to admit that I also used to feel sorry for myself. I grew up with a speech impediment known as a stutter. I often used to wonder as to why I was given this problem. It did not seem fair to me as I believed I was a really nice person.

I lived with the stuttering problem until the age of twenty-two and then began to have a change of attitude. Instead of looking at people who I thought were more fortunate than myself, I started to read and hear about people who were far less fortunate.

If I am asked by a particular person as to how I am I will now almost always reply in a positive manner - that is even if I am feeling really bad. I try and walk around with a smile on my face and am now living life to the full. I have also managed to overcome that horrible speech impediment and to therefore learn the ways to eradicate stuttering.

I am quite confident that if Nancy and people like her were to also have a change in attitude that their lives could improve in a big way as well.