My name is Stephen Hill, I have overcome a stutter which had affected
my life for eighteen years. I now help as many other people who stutter
to achieve fluency as I can. When I had a stutter, I would attend speech therapy, at which I would
be told to slow down or to take a deep breath before talking. Other
tips were to use costal breathing or to prolong my words.
This did not seem to help me very much and after attending these speech
therapy lessons for eighteen years decided it probably never would.
I firmly believed that my own stutter was very much a physcological as
well as a physical problem as at times I could talk very well, like for
example when I was talking to my girlfriend or when I was talking when
I was drunk.
I decided to read a lot of books about positive thinking for example
and at the same time started to study how good fluent talkers were
speaking compared to me. I was basically trying to re-learn how to
speak.
It was hard for me to truly believe I would ever be able to achieve
fluency as everyone had always told me that you can not overcome a
stutter.
After about a year though I managed to overcome the stutter and then started to help other people to achieve fluency.
I have been helping people now for around eight years and have helped
people who stutter from many different countries and backgrounds.
I run stutter speech therapy courses which are held in Birmingham in
England. They are one to one courses over three or five days. People
leave the course with a booklet which I call the stammering/stuttering
course notes and a seventy minute dvd. These act as a reminder of what
to do. People are also advised to keep in regular contact with me after
the course to ask any questions which may arise and for additional
support.
People who are unable to attend the course are able to purchase the course notes and dvd as a form of self help.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.
