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My story of recovery Joined Reddit a week ago, and this is the first community I joined. I started stammering when I was 8 years old. It happened out of nowhere. My stutter was obvious. Anyone talking to me for 5 minutes would be able to figure out that I had it. Kids made fun of me in school as usual. Like when I was made to read in front of the class, I couldn’t. The class would just burst out laughing. But for some reason, it didn’t affect me until I got my first job. That’s when the real terror started. I was made to introduce myself in front of 100 students who were campus recruited, and I couldn’t get my name out of my mouth. It was beyond embarrassing, and I froze. No crying, nothing. I just mentally froze. Over the next couple of months, many frequent reminders came that I wasn’t “normal” like others. I joined a stammering course where I met others who struggled with the same problem and realized that there are people out there with a much worse stutter than I did. For the first time, I felt it’s not that bad as it seems. When I used to see other people stammer, it honestly did not look funny to me. I thought to myself, if I don’t find this funny, then maybe even I don’t look that lame. One good thing happened in that course, which was they used to make us meditate for 15 minutes. It was blissful. Later on, I went ahead and joined a 10-day Vipassana course, and when I came out, I turned into a much calmer person. I started talking slowly (now I realize the pace at which one talks matters A LOT - Slow it down!). I started practicing talking slowly and stretching the first letter of every word, and in a couple of weeks, it started to help. I also joined toastmasters and in my first introduction speech, I told the club members that I’m here so I get comfortable stammering in front of others, I want to feel comfortable being laughed it. I have speeches publicly for 6 months and ofcourse I used to stammer but no one laughed. It helped me beyond measure but ofcourse the entire experience was SUPER uncomfortable. Many days and nights of feeling low and crying We all know when words don’t come out of our mouth it feels we ourselves are not in control, but I ended up having much better control over my mind. Now I’m left with a 10% stutter, and even if I do stutter in front of people for some reason, it has stopped affecting me. I’m grateful to my stutter that I got pulled into meditation and discovered a profound practice that helped me deal with not only my speech but also with other ups and downs of my life. I hope after reading my story, some of you feel motivated enough to go for a Vipassana, it truly worked for me.