My Journey as Stammerer

I was thinking to start the practice for stammering, then I thought what to practice so I decided to follow “Apna Hath Jaggannath” as Geeta and do step-by-step whatever written over there. My first activity was to share my stammering story. So, I am writing this blog to share some of my incidences of stammering.

I really felt bad when people mocked me for my stammering. In my childhood, whenever I go to shop to buy something, I was afraid that I won’t be able to say the things’ names without stammering and I always became conscious and always stammer as well. J I remembered a shopkeeper who mocked me whenever I went to his shop, so I left to go his shop.

I was also very much afraid of my Masi because she once mocked me and I started afraid of her since that day. I hardly talked to her apart from greeting her. Whenever she came to my home, I greeted her and went to my room and remained in the room until she left my house.

Later on this habit ingrained in me “to be alone” and I enjoyed the moment when I am alone. In my locality children talk a lot, usually talk rubbish and roam here and there. I was totally opposite I don’t talk much, don’t roam here and there, just study and play. So my parents were always proud of me and praised me like hell in front of relatives.

The habit of being alone became giant in me when I was in 11^th and 12^th class because I was preparing for IIT-JEE and I studied full day. Finally I reached to IIT Roorkee and I felt inferior at many points of time. As habit of not talking, not sharing anything with people, afraid of talking to people ingrained in me, so I felt like I was going down at every point of time. I remembered when I am the part of any discussion, I usually didn’t speak anything and I was afraid that if I would speak I would stammer and became inferior after seeing the verbal skills of other people. I wanted to get noticed, but I felt more inferior when I stammer on any word in discussions.

In my first year, we had a course of communication skills and we had to give presentation in that course. I was feeling that jumping from roof was easier than to attend that course. Finally my turn of speech came one day. I prepared the speech as well as much I could but when I went on stage to speak I was trembling. I have spoken 3-4 sentences with lot of stammering and then I told to professor that I couldn’t speak and he felt pity on me and allowed me to go back without saying anything. I was upset for full week but I didn’t know how to solve this problem and I didn’t have anyone to whom I can share this problem.

One more incident comes to mind. I went to ice cream parlour and I wanted to have Butter Scotch and as I went and trying to say the name “Butter”, word was not coming out, so I changed the word and told “Chocolate Cone Please”. I was very disappointed with this incident of mine, and I went to same shop again and unfortunately repeated the incident.

There are lot of list of these incidents.

In my 3^rd year of my college, I went to Herbertpur and met Dr Sachin. We were five people over there, he sent me to stage and said to speak on anything with stammer. I intentionally stammered on first 2-3 sentences and then I was speaking fluently. It was totally magic for me. In my usual conversations, I tried to hide stammering and stammered more, but when I was intentionally stammering in front of Sachin sir then I suddenly became fluent. Then he taught me about acceptance and gave some tasks for acceptance. I accepted and I felt such a confident that I started a group in my college with more than a team of 20 members. I organized one social festival. I did all this with stammering and didn’t hide the stammering.

Now 3 years have been passed since I have accepted my stammering. I have achieved lot of things in last 3 years but I still stammer at many incidents and at many words. I feel that I can gain more if I will improve my communication and overcome on stammering as much as I can do. So I have decided to start practicing the techniques written in “Apna Hath Jaggannath”.

Bye bye for now, I will post my next blog with the practices I will follow.