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From: A. (Drew). G. Stewart. (Ak. N.Z.)
Date: 07 Oct 2006
Time: 20:44:57 -0500
Remote Name: 222.152.10.107
I'm a fairly new member of toastmasters, here in Auckland New Zealand. I have a mod-severe stutter & in 2005 at the national Speakeasy conference, I heard Dr S Block speak on "Exposure Therapy". I took it on board & used Toastmasters as the required vehicle to practice it. It has worked wonders although there is still a lot of work to do in other areas. Eg: Mixing & mingling; Talking 1/1 I still find that difficult at times. Overall it has improved 75%. I now enjoy fluent speech on the phone, R.T, & when strangers ask for directions;(I'm a cabby). At Toastmasters, I ran my 1st table topics session, & my speech was 90% perfect. I was over the moon. Now I am trying to deal with over-coming the fear of a major relapse, & wanting to find out how I will fair in front of an audience of strangers. Eg: Another Toastmasters club.(I'm set to give my 5th speech next meeting). I'm 57 at the end of the month & I would like to publicly acknowledge that none of the above would have been possible without the Internet, Toastmasters, & people like you who gave me the inspiration. Thank you.