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Would you say that you are often down and depressed? Do you become easily stressed? Do you find it difficult to speak at times? Do you find life a big struggle? Around eleven years ago I would have answered yes to all of these questions. I had to go through the first twenty-two years of my life with a speech impediment to contend with. I am now able to talk fluently after working very hard to overcome the stutter and my whole life has improved one hundred percent.

I am not really sure why but I was a very weak person when I was a child, what some would call a bit of a cry baby. I developed a speech impediment when I was around five years old and then let it control my life for the next seventeen years. I had what some people call a stammer but what is better known as a stutter. I was very ashamed of this and would attempt to hide the fact that I had this stutter as much as I possibly could. I would do this by adopting some very clever coping techniques. For example for some reason I found it hard to meet new people, this may be because I had a lack of all round confidence. I would therefore try very hard to avoid meeting new people and when the situation arose where I did have to meet somebody new I would be very quiet and would hardly speak a word.

I was also very much aware which words I could and could not say. I had a huge dislike to any word which began with the letter b and again would avoid all of these type words at all cost. At times I would have to think of an alternative word to say, as an example I used to live in a place called Brixham but when people asked me where I lived I would say Torquay. Torquay was actually ten miles away!

My childhood was not exactly a happy one as the stutter caused me lots of stress and worries every day. I could often spend weeks in a depressed state and this made my parents unsure of how to help me. This depression was very hard to get myself out of as there just seemed that there was no hope of me ever being able to speak fluently. I had attended speech therapy for many years with very little success.

Aged twenty-two I decided enough was enough and started on a journey which would eventually lead me to reaching my goal of fluency.