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Challenging speaking situations for a person who stutters: An inspirational story.

For the first time in my life, I could say whenever I wanted.

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For the first time in my life I could say whenever I wanted.
For the first time in my life I could say whenever I wanted.

I was mainly a covert stutterer (I could hide my stutter really well), but in certain situations and with certain people I was extremely overt (I stammered severely). These were challenging speaking situations for me.

I’m from Hungary and I moved to London for one main reason; to work on my speech (I have a stutter/stammer). I am now settled in London and working on my stutter.

I joined the McGuire Programme in March of 2016, which was my first course.

Last weekend I visited my homeland Hungary for the first time since I joined the McGuire Programme. In Hungarian, I was mainly covert (I could hide my stutter really well), but I had certain situations and certain people when I was extremely overt (I stammered severely). These were challenging speaking situations for me.

Challenging speaking situations for a person who stutters: An inspirational story.
For the first time in my life, I could say whenever I wanted.

One of those bad speaking situations was speaking with my family, especially with my aunt (never understood this, since she is lovely). I got to a point when I could not even say a single word. Basically, I have never had a normal conversation with them in my life.

When I was talking about the McGuire Programme with my cousins they said: this is all good, but you know what would be the biggest achievement? If you could speak with your aunt. And I knew that, too. In fact, I did not want to rush to visit my family because I wanted to make sure I was strong enough.

So this visit to my aunt happened last weekend. For the first time in my whole life, I could speak whenever I wanted and I could say whatever I wanted. I did not have to tell them about my stammer I do not find it very useful generally with friends and family because they know that I stammer anyway.

In the beginning, I used the techniques and talked about normal things, like what my life is like in London. I did not have a single block (a stuttering block). Then afterwards, I told explained all about the programme, the techniques, the breathing, the basic cycle, contacts, the psychological side, what I felt like before I joined the programme and the challenging speaking situations I faced daily.

We never talked about my speech before. I explained all about the course and what’s involved, that on my first day, they recorded a video of me and I could not even say my name and on Sunday (after 3 full days, I gave a speech in front of an audience, that included my best friend and brother.

At that point, I started to cry and basically, every female member of my family was crying. All those years of frustration, fear, isolation, and misunderstanding just disappeared. It was a very emotional but happy moment.

I’ve been on the programme for 7 months now (2016), and I have had my ups and downs and challenging speaking situations, but I keep up the good necessary work and work hard on maintaining it. But if only for that Saturday it was all worth it!

My cousin’s wife said: “The biggest achievement is when you defeat yourself and your fears.”

Also, my 81-year-old grandma could see me speak eloquently instead of not saying anything or stammering badly. This really meant a lot to me. My aunt said I spoke more in their house on that day than ever before during my 26 years.

I just want to say thank you to everyone in the programme for helping me to achieve this, which I could have never been able to before the programme.

Especially a BIG THANK YOU to Sam Dowsing my personal McGuire Programme coach who I call every day to practice and work on the techniques and who keeps me moving forward. I will never be able to express how much I appreciate your help!