I overcame my severe stammer in three days. Now communication is my strongest asset.

I overcame my severe stammer in three days. Now communication is my strongest asset. I just came onto this subreddit and noticed it is a very depressing place, no offence, but reading depression stories doesn't make anything go away, well except for what you want to keep. So here's a more positive story for y'all. But first lets start with a negative... Be me, university, level 4, final ORAL exam. I completely avoided the seminar in-front of 200 people. Score. But now I had a second oral in-front of my tutor group. "Just 5 minutes" they said. Yeah, 5 minutes of torture. I couldn't avoid this. No. God no. Jesus, Buddah if you are up there, make my stammer just go away for these five minutes. I prepared a fun topic, and spent the entire night practising it. On the day I wanted to go first, to get it out of the way, the teacher asked who wanted to go first... No-one's hand went up, and again and again, eventually I was last, I was shaking so much, and not just me, 1 of the 6 classmates in the room, moved because they couldn't write as the table was shaking too much ([here's a visual](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ac/d4/52/acd4524fc092f8fd618ba920c4bb9668.gif)). I eventually got called to the stage, all I had to do was speak to 6 people for 5 minutes, my years in NHS speech theraphy and intensive care were all training for this monent. I looked to the door, locked, damn. I looked to the window, 10th floor, I thought about jumping for 2 minutes solid, I doubt I could make the fall. "Well" I was urged by the teacher. Thirty minutes later I was close to finishing, my talk went slightly overtime I admit, the bell was about to ring and my abs were on fire from pushing the fucking air out of my closed throat. I pushed and forced out the last word, my fingers bloody with the tension. No one spoke for the rest of the session, I looked down and wondered why my fingers were sideways. Shit. I broke them, not again, it was two this time. Well too embarrassed to see the doctor I duck taped them straight with a Popsicle stick and continued with my day. The next day I begged my mum for 2 grand and had no dice, I applied for school funding after getting my initial fee for a private speech therapy course knocked down by 1 grand. I had to pay £2100 with my own pocket money. This was for four courses bearing in mind (the first I got down to only £1100). I went to the course, Manchester 13^th April 1016. This was run by.. lets call her George (its the only name I can think of ok). George was feared by the members for being quite intense. Me I followed her to the finest detail. All I heard throughout these few days were complaints about how hard the course was. But I never wanted to want to jump out of a ten story building window again, so I ignored them. It was all or nothing. Live or die, I couldn't afford another course, and I couldn't afford to have it fail. The course was 5 days. 7am start, 8am breakfast, and a dinner. No lunch because lunch is for cowards. And no breaks. 11pm finish. Some days we got to end at 10:30 which was a god send to most, but a waste of money to me. I had insomnia so my sleep was a little less than the allowed 8 hours before we had to get up again. My room-mate (an advanced member) found time to get pissed while I lay in bed awake. I wasn't allowed to drink. Describing the specifics of what we did is hard on paper so I ask you to hold your arms out straight, like you were making the letter T or imagining you were a bird and breath as if you were about to jump into a swimming pool on every breath, now move your thumbs back until they are almost 180 to your fingers. Hard right? If not it will be after some time. We had to do this for the full 5 days. **9-11**. **No breaks**. Learning to breath was difficult as well. You see shallow breaths had been for years associated with stammer, we could spend 40 years trying to change that association or a few day associating controlled speech with good breathing. After a few days I was the top student, putting the experienced grads in their place. They would come to a course, update their speech, go home, use non of the techniques, gradually get worsened speech, and go to a new course. Me. This was life or death. So far I have only fallen back into old habits once, and that was due to exam stress, I have since started again. Back to my good ways. Anybody who says they have completely gotten rid of their stammer is bullshitting you. Either they get so many positive feeling that they can use sloppy speech and hide it for a good while without too many instances of struggle, or you keep up practice every day to make speech a strong asset. You don't get rid of it, you never get rid of it, you learn to control it. Preferably by breathing properly, if you stop this trigger, you start stammering again. And similarly, everyone has a stammer, even if just one stutter a day, everybody has one to some degree. Also some therapies teach you tricks to use, the NHS ones I went to long ago taught us to click our fingers or slap our legs to ease out words. **Do not use these**. These ultimately fail, without exception! They work for a few weeks but no longer. You can't re-write a 20 year habit by slapping your leg, but you can re-write a new habit of slapping your leg with making your stammer worse. From a listener's perspective I remember I was speaking to a person who started batting his eyes, chatting his teeth, whistling, clicking fingers and stamping his foot on the ground. I didn't realise he had a stammer, I thought he had Tarrets! So I guess if you want to look like that, you won't have to worry about people noticing your stammer at least... But seriously, don't do that shit. The reason why the therapy worked, was not that it was some magic pill. But that I stuck to it, and put everything I had into it. After the third day I went out and spoke to 100 people (164 to be exact) on the street, then I got up on a shitty plastic box and gave a speech in the middle of Manchester. I admit I didn't know what to say now that I knew how to talk so I made some shitty jokes that no-one got, but I eventually matured. Then I signed up for a pickup course. Now there is a feminist bullshit view on pickup that you've probably heard. Women talk about relationships in groups and have magazines like the Cosmopolitan dedicated to "getting him" to buy them shit and marry them faster, and men don't have that so for some reason these cancerous social justice warriors that strive for "equality" go on a rampage whenever pickup is mentioned (which by the way doesn't seem like their striving for real "equality now does it"). For those who don't know pickup, is a group of guys who are scared of talking to women, getting together to push themselves to ask a woman out. After a few months of pickup and a few self imposed seminars my speech became pretty damn strong. After all ordering food myself (a feat I had not done previously) was an easy task compared to stopping a woman on the street and asking for her phone number, or making out with her, and doing large seminar talks. There are two types of stammers in this world, those who hide their stammer using tricks and filler words (which I no longer use, um, err, ect..), and those who say what they want to say, no matter how long it takes (or how many fingers they break). I was the latter, and it helped me to take on the therapy techniques faster. After almost a year of speech training (my anniversary is in 4 days *yay*) I am a better, more eloquent and more confident speaker than any other person in my university, and probably city. I later made games out of street practising, I would go to a person, start a conversation, stop mid word and keep constant eye contact to see how long they could go in silence without saying anything. My record, 81 seconds. People listen better when you make eye-contact. Now girls tell me to stop looking them in the eye when I ask them out. I guess it's cause their so used to guys looking at their breasts. It's a pretty good feeling. I got there by practising my breathing every-single-day. Non stop. I think I may have even found a way to practice my speech and get paid at the same time. Those damn Asians will do anything to speak to an English person. I speak slowly and practice my breathing, they get to speak slowly and practice English. Win-win. I am offline often so I don't really care what happens to this post, the course of choice doesn't really matter, just ask if they rely on tricks, if they don't and people have seen results, you can take those results as far as you want. Just remember, your outcome is directly proportional to your regular input. I will speak to you again after I have achieved my new dreams of creating a successful YouTube channel (100,000+ subs), learning Japanese in four weeks, becoming a Japanese celebrity in music, and starting my own English business idea, after becoming a millionaire of course. These have arose after completing all of my speaking dreams and my fingers healed nicely. I wonder what you will find after you start taking your first steps of action? That is all, Good day. TL:DR pushups situps and plenty of juice [Edit], I've been getting a lot of PM's. Listen to Maximum Confidence by Jack Canfield if you have the time (I couldn't find a free version online so I signed up for audible free, pirated the cd and unsubscribed straight away, [lol get rekt audible, try to sign me up for two accounts at once will you]). You won't see results for anything unless you 100% believe it, I'm not picking on anyone but seeing phrases like "I can only hope to become like you" and "I'm a bad speaker" that you say in your head, become self for-filing prophecies, when I do anything I am in 150% belief that I will achieve it, and as a result I do. When asked "How do you expect to get a 1st in your level 5 degree when last year you barely passed?" I reply, "I'll tell you how, after I get a first". You need that confidence to spur you on. Despite the belief Motivation is not a good motivator. Habit is, so start actively pursuing what you want, It's not going to come to you until pursuing is a solid habit. Then things will just fall on your lap. btw the course I went on was the McGuire course, but any will work so long as they don't rely on tricks