I started the No Stuttering Project on November 28th and I have seen some improvement but not much. I wanted to take this time to explain a couple places that I’m going wrong and some advice for myself and other stutterers.

First and foremost for everyone who is trying this, please understand that no one will ever see a 100% loss in their stuttering as soon as they try. I have not seen a huge increase in the number of times that I stutter, but I feel that the more I try to prevent it the more I stutter. I guess you could say that I’m one of the many people who find it hard to break old habits. I also understand that it will take months if not years for me to see a huge decrease in the number of times that I stutter, I have accepted and embraced the fact.

Going a little bit further into the problem, I have a problem with confidence in which I doubt my ability to not stutter and therefor I do. As my friend Dennis told me “You don’t stutter when your mad and this whole stuttering bullshit is all in your head”. I agree with him 100% and with what my friend Nikko said (”Know that you won’t stutter and you’ll be fine.”). Of course he also said “it won’t be as easy as snapping your fingers” or something like that, but he is right in saying that I will not be able to gain confidence overnight. A friend of mine by the name of Danny Goldman told me that he was able to overcome his fear of socializing by putting himself in situations that are out of his comfort zone. I agree with Danny and I think I will start taking myself out of my comfort zone little by little.

Here is a quote from the wikihow article on “How to stop Stuttering”, “Stop being nervous. The real deal here is to stay calm, and let things flow. If you try to adjust to others, it simply won’t work out. Make yourself feel comfortable, and you will see the results.” It may be me alone who does this but often times I find myself thinking about what someone else thinks about me which in the end only has the effect of making my stutter worse. The technique that I have employed to help me stop stuttering as much is to simply breathe when I feel a stutter is going on and to stop when I feel myself stuttering. It may sound stupid to some but once I get some batteries for my camera I will be more than happy to post some videos of me doing exactly that.

I feel that I have made some progress and regardless of how little or how much progress I have made I still feel good that I’ve taken a step forward.

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