How can I improve my speech and stop stuttering?
My stuttering has taken over my life! I’m afraid to meet new people and talk in public because of my stutter. Speech therapy has not helped.
I tend to stutter more with my dad and with strangers than others such as my friends.
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Read out loud and sing your favorite songs.
Singing improves fluency because you get familiar with words and you get confident after repeating words or phrases after a while.
Reading improves your pace and the faster you read, the less you will stutter.
Poetry is one of the easiest things to begin with. May poems are short and many have rhythm.
Books or articles can be boring, unless you love to read.
I think you should also do breathing exercises to stay calmed when talking to people. Also, think about what you want to say before you speak and try to keep it as short and to the point as possible.
That should make you less self-conscious from now on.
What specifically have you done in speech therapy? Stuttering in adulthood is different from stuttering in childhood. In kids, stuttering is often resolved as they grow up (although not in all kids), but in adulthood, stuttering cannot be ‘cured.’ What you can do is learn compensatory and relaxation techniques, in addition to getting rid of what we in the speech path field call ‘garbage thoughts’ that reflect your anxiety and embarrassment over your stutter.
If you stutter in the beginning of a sentence, you can try what we call ‘easy onset,’ where you basically make the first letter of the word gentler than how you would usually pronounce is. So instead of ‘Ball,’ it would be more like ‘ball’ (the uppercase/lowercase signify the force with which you use to say the ‘b’)…Haha this isn’t translating on the computer as it would if I were explaining it in person. Also, slow down your rate, it might sound weird to you but to the listener, they most likely won’t notice a thing except how fluent you are speaking :-)
I would give speech therapy another go. Just remember that you will never be 100% free of your stutter, but there are definitely ways to keep it under control!
I am a stutterer. My parents tried every kind of treatment to stop me stuttering when I was young - speech therapy, hypnosis, diet change etc. I found high school and immediate post high school the worst but once I entered the workforce it became a lot easier. People were more accepting.
Did you notice that your own name is the hardest thing to say, therefore the thought of introducing yourself to anyone is terrifying. Personally, my stuttering goes up and down according to my stress levels.
I got married, started a family and was in the frame of mind that I was always going to stutter and nothing I did would improve it, and I was actually okay with that. Stuttering was what I did when I talked but it wasn’t who I was or what I was about.
Then I came across a TV program that advertised a new program for adult stutterers. I looked into it and went along to the program. Although expensive it was worth every cent. Although they didn’t “cure” my stuttering, they taught me how to breath better when I was speaking so as to minimise the stuttering so that the average person wouldn’t recognise that I stuttered. Of course I still have times when I stutter when my stress levels are high but nothing near what it was before.
I am a supervisor of a department and have to chair a lot of meetings and talk on the phone to strangers or people of authority. Previously I would have stressed over it for many sleepless nights but now I don’t blink an eyelid at having to do things like that.
I wish you luck, no one but a stutter can understand what we go through.
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