Life is easier without the fear of stammering, but losing the fear can be a long process. Barry Fox recalls how he left the fear behind.

Group therapy gave me the tools to be fluent. But the usual descent into disfluency - usually after about three months - sent me from one embarrassing confrontation to the next with all the tenacity of the habitual stammerer. Still, I struggled on.

It was only after some years had elapsed that the most intimidating and feared part of my therapy took any effect:
The 'De-sensitisation'...We were asked to take a questionnaire into the city centre - a questionnaire which asked questions about stammering. One candidate burst into tears and said, "I can't do this." But the hardhearted therapist persuaded her to go. "Even if you only stand and watch," she pleaded. She went, and was pleasantly surprised, as we all were, that the public reaction was not the scoffing, sarcasm that we had expected. The attitude expressed was more an interested and sympathetic attitude, not a patronising sympathy either, but a real interest, as if from genuine curiosity.

We even got a laugh or two from this exercise. One question was, "Do you know of any cure for stammering?" The most amusing answer came from an earnest middle-aged gent, who maintained that if one held one's finger in front of one's eyes and focussed on it, the stammer would go. This was probably true, as the attention would leave the speech and give that person the freedom from tension that he needed, but could one cope with holding one's finger in front of the eyes on every speaking occasion?

However, I struggled on for a number of years having periods of sporadic frequency. But being basically an outward going and energetic person, my stammer was particularly frustrating.

But then, the seed that was planted by the therapist budded, giving me intimations of the possibilities of fearlessness. "Don't be afraid, don't be afraid..." kept haunting me until, like a mantra, I found myself repeating it over and over in my mind until I began to realise that 'nobody really gives a damn what you sound like. It is what you say that matters in the end'.

And, "If your audience isn't interested, it isn't your stammer, it is the content that turns them off."

All this I realised in my head. But it took roughly five years for it to become heart knowledge.

The embryonic period was one of utter confusion. In this period, I experimented by jumping into compromising situations, just to find out what would happen - sometimes with dire results. Here I discovered a world full of exciting possibilities. But never quite knowing what I was looking for, I therefore, never found it...was never fully satisfied. But then, I thought, "Is life ever fully satisfying?"

Nevertheless, one day I was so depressed and disorientated, that I went to counselling. We looked at the black cloud of fear still enveloping me and considered it instead, a many-layered onion. We peeled this onion and separated each layer, each fear, and found that taken one by one, faced separately, these fears dissolved into thin air like the misty illusions that they were. But as we peeled away the layers, even darker fears came to light, but then the sessions came to an end.

One day a realisation like a flash of lightening gave me an insight - the intuitive certainty that one can stammer without fear. I was suddenly able to jettison the whole concept of fear.

Then I began to feel free.

"Just get on with it", I shouted to all and sundry.

I am now 65 years old. My 64th year has been one of my best years, if perhaps my most foolish one. One does get thick skinned with age, but this knowledge - this freedom - is more than developing a thick skin, I'm sure.

I urge fellow stammerers to get on with it. "You stammer? So what?"

From the Spring 2003 edition of Speaking Out