Do you think there is a cure for this speech problem?

Hey guys,

I have big goals in life and I'm willing to work hard to achieve them but there is just one thing that is really stopping me and I don't know what to do.

Stuttering.

Everything else is easy compared to this one. I don't know if it is just temporary or permanent. I don't remember how long I have had it but I do remember this one time when I was around 11 years old. My family and I went somewhere to do some stuff, and they asked us questions and everyone in my family was able to answer the questions. But when it was my turn, I stuttered and couldn't answer the questions. I don't want to say what happened. After that I just looked outside the windows. Maybe that's why I can still remember it, the image of me looking outside the windows is still in my head.

It isn't as bad today but it is still annoying. Sometimes I talk fine, other times I can't get the words to come out of my mouth. I'm not afraid of going up to people and talking to them but it gets awkward when there is a long silence and funny when I keep trying to get my words out. It's especially worse when I talk on the phone, sometimes people just hang up on me when I'm not even finished because there is a long silence and other times I can't even finish what I'm saying or it takes a lot longer. I've had it happen to me too many times so I just suck it up and deal with it. I try to always have a positive mindset so that things like these won't get me down. My parents were born poor and had little education so not much they could have done over the years because they were too busy working.

I know I can still live life fine even with it but I have big goals and I think it's going to be the difference maker if I'm going to succeed or fail in business. I don't think people are going to take me seriously because of it. I want to be an entrepreneur and run my own marketing business. I want to go to places like New York City (I grew up there so it means so much to me).

I did some research and found a book called "Self Therapy for the Stutterer" so I'm going to read it and see if it works. And once I start making money, I'm definitely going to see a speech therapist (it's been way too long).

Thank you all. (This thread is 100% serious, not a joke like the compliment one. I save funny/joke/lol threads for the weekends, when it's time to relax and have fun)

I know it may seem a little outside the box thinking, but I would seriously consider looking at your diet. Most people don't think of sensitivities and allergies as causing speech impediments but I've found both for myself and others that when certain additives or chemicals were removed from the diet there was a big improvement overall, in particular with fast food, pop, MSG, gum, aspartame etc.

You may find you have a clearer mind and that thoughts flow more easily from your mind and out your mouth. Most if not all ADD and ADHD is at least partially caused by these factors, the same I fully believe goes for any emotional or mental condition. You have nothing to lose by trying it and odds are you'll find a consciously healthy diet changes a lot for you.

Go do research about it, and how to fix it. Create a blog, and generate unique content describing your experience. Write an ebook. Sell it on there. Rank it, and turn your previous problem into a money making machine.

Tons of people stutter.

PS> You come up with the weirdest threads on BHW.

Could be diet and lifestyle. Is stuttering your only "problem"?

These things tend to clear with age, in most cases anyway! Are you a confident guy? If not, would working on your confidence help it at all?

Go watch the king's speech and I think it will give you a confidence boost. You can get over this!

I agree the kings speech would be inspiring.

As a fellow stutterer...I must say that first of all there are very different a distinct types of stuttering. So first I would identify the type of blockage you have. some types show improvement with types of chiropractic to fuse certain bones structures in the back of your head but if your blockage is neurological, there is not cure per say. A speech pathologist will only help you overcome your fear of stuttering and give you techniques to deal with your stuttering like drawing out words or disrupting blockages. But keep your head up bro...on average stutters are fairly intelligent and girls think it's cute and innocent

I don't personally stutter, but a few years ago watched documentary about stuttering and there was a Dr that was treating people with a pair of headphones that played everything you said back to you, but with a slight delay. Had a HUGE sucess rate. I just checked google and it looks like the treatment is called Delay Auditory Feedback. Like I said before I haven't personally had in experience with it, ,but the results of that documentary were so good I would personally give it a try if I stuttered. Good luck.

I don't know much about this ailment. But, I do know that there are many people who were able to get rid of this problem forever from their life.

Like every other achievement in life, you need to have that bulldog desire and determination to get rid of ailments like these.

Don't think negative. Like others, you can also get rid of this problem sooner or later. Keep Thriving hard and good luck!

Bro, thanks for sharing this, its funny that i have never heard of it but i sort of stopped looking at modern stuttering research when they were doing those drug trials ..(forget what the drug was called but basically beta blockers) Anyway, i found an iphone app called DAF assistant and am trying it out now...seems very good ....so again thanks

Bots_Do_it_Faster said:

I don't personally stutter, but a few years ago watched documentary about stuttering and there was a Dr that was treating people with a pair of headphones that played everything you said back to you, but with a slight delay. Had a HUGE sucess rate. I just checked google and it looks like the treatment is called Delay Auditory Feedback. Like I said before I haven't personally had in experience with it, ,but the results of that documentary were so good I would personally give it a try if I stuttered. Good luck.

Click to expand...

Xanthos said:

I know it may seem a little outside the box thinking, but I would seriously consider looking at your diet. Most people don't think of sensitivities and allergies as causing speech impediments but I've found both for myself and others that when certain additives or chemicals were removed from the diet there was a big improvement overall, in particular with fast food, pop, MSG, gum, aspartame etc.

You may find you have a clearer mind and that thoughts flow more easily from your mind and out your mouth. Most if not all ADD and ADHD is at least partially caused by these factors, the same I fully believe goes for any emotional or mental condition. You have nothing to lose by trying it and odds are you'll find a consciously healthy diet changes a lot for you.

Click to expand...

phatzilla said:

Could be diet and lifestyle. Is stuttering your only "problem"?

Click to expand...

I don't know what is causing it. It could be my poor health since I used to eat a lot of junk food and all those toxins in my body are now causing my fatigue. I didn't have health problems when I was a kid so I don't know.

Bots_Do_it_Faster said:

I don't personally stutter, but a few years ago watched documentary about stuttering and there was a Dr that was treating people with a pair of headphones that played everything you said back to you, but with a slight delay. Had a HUGE sucess rate. I just checked google and it looks like the treatment is called Delay Auditory Feedback. Like I said before I haven't personally had in experience with it, ,but the results of that documentary were so good I would personally give it a try if I stuttered. Good luck.

Click to expand...

Thank for you telling me about it. I think the device is called SpeechEasy. I'm going to look into it.

course575 said:

I don't know much about this ailment. But, I do know that there are many people who were able to get rid of this problem forever from their life.

Like every other achievement in life, you need to have that bulldog desire and determination to get rid of ailments like these.

Don't think negative. Like others, you can also get rid of this problem sooner or later. Keep Thriving hard and good luck!

Click to expand...

You are right. This is just an obstacle on the road to success. I just have to work hard and never give up.

Hi NowYouCan!

Firstly I could not believe I did not misread this threads title. In fact, I am stuttering myself! And as I am 23 right now and do stutter eversince I can remember, I am dealing with it for lets say about 15 years now.

I had a lot of trouble with it in school - I think you know what kind of. All the time speaking as less as possible doesn't give you really good grades, they even made an "Integrationskind" of me. Its german for children that are hard to integrate into the class. They (or 'we') were getting extra focus and help and stuff, but nothing did help to me.

Finally, during the 9th grade - before going to the "Oberstufe" - I think thats what Highschool is in the USA - I joined to make a therapy. And what can I tell, it helped really well! But to don't give you wrong hopes, it didn't kill my stuttering.

As I did a lot of research and hazzle with this topic, I can tell you now that there a basically two types of therapies you can do:

1. "Fluency shaping" therapy - you learn some techniques to get your speaking more fluent and some kind of "hide" your real speaking by using these techniques to let other people not even know that you are a stutterer. In fact, sounds good, but if you don't practise this stuff each and everyday, you will unlearn it very fast. I'm personally not a fan of this.

2. "Non avoidance" therapy - you learn to live with and love your stuttering to say it in short words. For sure, its not easy to do such a therapy as there are psychological parts also. You will analyze your stuttering in 'mechanical' ways and also search for any bad feelings you may have with it. It tells you have like three circles of stuttering which overlap each other. The inner circle is your core stuttering, just the blocks and repetitions you have, the scond circle is so called 'escape behaivour', in case you are in a block, you try everything to escape it quickly, like nodding your head or stamping with your foot - or whatever you do, every stuttering is different. Third and outer circle is the avoidance. Like, you speak very less to avoid that you might stutter, OR you place other words (synonyms) for word that you know of you would stutter with. (Most stutters know shortly before speaking the word that they will stutter in this word, do you do so too? I do.)
This therapy tries to get rid of circle two and three and gives you a few very simple techniques that are just for your core stuttering. You even learn pseudo stuttering for the case you are "too fluent", and need a little stuttering for your training.

This second therapy chaned my life totally! I made it to a, well, lets say, well paid professional web developer. I work in a team here in Berlin with that I have to speak on a daily basis, in german and english, and I do stutter every day! They have no other chance to just accept it and wait for my wise words

To put it in a nutshell: NO! I don't think there is a cure, but I am totally living with it and its pretty cool to be me anyways For sure, we both will never become pilots or everything, think of a plane crashing because the captain could not communicate properly. Thats sad and I would love to be a pilot very much, but never will. But still, no reason to give up anything else!

All the Best!

famous people who stutter:
hxxp://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/famous/famouspws.html
Hope this one can give you a confident boost to achieve success with your stuttering problem, because you'll see so many stutterer can achieve success, and became one of the greatest speaker ever! (Winston Churchill for example)

hxxp://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1683
This one is a good read to help you understand the neurological cause of stuttering, one of theory in this article is about "Valsalva mechanism" this one is interesting theory about how you thinking to saying a certain letter can trigger stuttering.

hxxp://www.valsalva.org/freestutteringhelp.htm
This page will gives you more info about Valsalva mechanism, and get free help from By William D. Parry, J.D., M.A., CCC-SLP, just download the book and read it, it'll gives you a basic clue about valsalva manouver and how to control it (just a little)

hxxp://www.stutteringrecovery.com/recovery.html
Another free little advice about how to control stuttering titled "The Process of Self-Initiated Recovery"
Hope this can help you a little bit.