Alex Sawyer

I joined the McGuire programme in November 2008. Around 8 years before that I had a relatively successful period of speech therapy but it didn’t hold up over time. The McGuire Programme was something I was aware of, my mum had mentioned it to me on several occasions, but I knew it had a reputation for being hard, and I wasn’t sure I was ready. Then a particularly excruciating incident, where someone completely misunderstood me as a result of my stammering out of control and massive avoidance of words, resulted in huge feelings of fear, shame, guilt, self-hate and isolation and I thought “I can’t go on like this, I have to do something”. 

I like the mental, emotional and spiritual objectives of the programme. These gave me an immensely positive approach to my stammer and translate to my wider life even. The message running through the whole programme is “If I work hard and follow directions, I can deal with this, I can handle it”. I think mentally I have become a stronger person overall as a result of the McGuire Programme.