The Financial Cost of Stopping Stuttering — Is Stuttering Therapy Worth It?

I'll say it up front. Fluency is priceless. It's total freedom and it's priceless. Any adult who stutters and has been stuttering for a while would do anything to stop stuttering. If you told someone who stutters that you could do magic and could take away their stuttering overnight for $100,000, they would break into a bank to get the money.

Stuttering is a terrible burden and only another stutterer knows what it's like to stutter. It holds you back in every way you can think of — career-wise, business-wise, and socially. You don't say what you'd like to say, or express yourself in circumstances where you would like to.

It's a terrible burden, but the great thing about it is that you can get better. Maybe not everyone can achieve perfect fluency but you can certainly improve significantly if you are willing to do the work, and work hard.

Now hard work means different things to different people. In my case I was obsessed with stopping stuttering and curing myself. It was on my mind from the time I woke up till the time I went to bed at night.

I started stuttering when I was about 6 or 7 years old and by the time I got to college I was miserable, and seeing the school psychologist because I was so depressed about my speech. I grew up with a lot of fears but I always confronted them, so I made myself run for President of the Freshman class even though I couldn't say my last name, Gurian.

I had other kids who knew me from high school introduce me to kids I didn't know and ask them to vote for me, and I told myself that if I could win the election I wouldn't have to stutter anymore because it would tell me that people liked me. I guess I had the feeling that people didn't like me, even though they treated me as if I was popular. I just didn't feel it.

I was two years younger than everyone else. I was only 16 when I went to college, and I looked very young. Long story short I won the election and was the President of the whole Freshman class of Hunter College — and I still stuttered. It was a great lesson for me. It taught me that outside validation in life doesn't work. It doesn't matter how many people compliment you and tell you that you're amazing and wonderful. It matters what you think of yourself.

That started my journey on curing myself. I was determined not to go through my entire life as a stutterer if the truth was that there was nothing wrong with me. And the key was that I could speak better when I was alone. I could say "Gurian" and any other "hard word" but when I tried to say it to you I would stutter.

So I worked day and night and made up exercises and challenged myself to do everything that made me afraid and uncomfortable. I signed up for speech classes — not speech therapy — but a class where I had to give speeches to the rest of the class.

The amazing thing was that I would stutter before the speech and after the speech but not DURING the speech. Everyone was amazed, especially me! I think what happened is that the same way an actor becomes another person as is written in the script, I allowed myself to become the Jeffrey Gurian who didn't stutter.

And I told myself: if you can be fluent some of the time, you can be fluent all of the time. That was my goal and I worked very hard to achieve it. I created affirmations to literally change my mind, developed exercises, and went into large department stores to start conversations with people working behind the counters. It took quite a while but it worked.

But the problem in the stuttering community is that many people feel hopeless. They have tried many things that did not work and spent lots of time and money only to stay stuttering — sometimes even worse than before. But spending money on something that does work is just making an investment in yourself, and part of stopping stuttering is attaining self-esteem and self-confidence.

When you have self-esteem and self-confidence, you know that you deserve to be happy and are willing to invest in yourself.

The fear of the cost is real — and it's why I offer a complimentary session, totally free. It's also why I built this website, www.stopstutteringnowgurian.com, which I ask people to explore to see if what I'm saying makes sense to them. It must make sense in order for you to start incorporating the new thoughts in your own mind and being able to use them.

You already know your own thoughts. If those thoughts are not working for you, it means you need NEW thoughts — which is exactly what this program does. It gives you a new way of thinking about your speech and yourself.

The one criterion I use is simple: if you can speak better when you are alone, then I can help you.

Fill out the contact form and send me an e-mail with some background and information and we can set up that complimentary session. There is no cost, no obligation — just a conversation about what fluency could mean for your life.

I wish you fluency!

Sincerely, Dr. Jeffrey L. Gurian