I am Prabhjot Kaur, from Aligarh (UP) a MBA pass-out, of 24 yrs of age. I have joined the speech therapy centre a month before. I encountered the problem of stammering when I was around 6-7 years old. It had never been so severe that it may affect my normal reading sessions in class or my conversations with my friends and class-mates. But the problem showed its presence whenever I had to talk to somebody unknown or in authority, or when suddenly asked to speak in class by the teacher. Whenever I was unprepared with my words, I stammered.
People around often say that you`ll grow out of it as you`ll grow by age, but just like as in the case of many other stammerers, you don`t really grow out of it but, you learn to live with it. We learn the tricks, substitute words and often try to fool the people around so that they can`t get a hint that we stammered or had a block. But as it`s a saying that "You can fool some of the people all the time, or, all of the people some of the time, but, you cannot fool all the people all the time" and precisely, even if you are genius enough to do that,you definitely can`t fool yourself!! That feeling of helplessness gets deep rooted within and starts paralyzing your self-confidence and belief in your efficiencies. As a result, 'n' no. of times I didn`t raise my hand to give answers in class, even when I knew them so right! Especially when I joined the MBA institute, it was so damn difficult to participate in group discussions and presentations that we need to give in front of the whole class.
With so many moments of embarrassment and frustration, I somehow completed the 2 years of post-graduate study and got placed in a company. But since my joining was yet awaited, I wanted to cure my speech impediment so that I don`t go through all those moments at my job too! Destiny favored me and I got an opportunity to meet A.P. Singh Sir, who transformed my personality by giving me full assistance and support in my efforts to cure my stammering. He explained diligently all the exercises, therapy mechanism, functioning of vocal organs and encouraged me to participate in their public speaking session that held every weekend. It`s been a month here and I could still feel a lot of improvement in me. My confidence in myself has increased leaps and bounds. I feel a driving force in me now that pulls me through the toughest of situations. My faith in getting completely cured has strengthened by the amount of progress I made. The continuous vocal and breathing exercises, and the weekly public speaking sessions, not just helps in curing stammering but is a learning experience too. We get to learn so much on various aspects of life and every opinion counts! That increases our knowledge base which again helps in building confidence, a sure solution for stammering.
Here, I got a belief that even 'Stammerers can become Orators' and I hope within a few months I would be able to convert this belief into reality. A Positive attitude and firm determination is the key to success.