I have just treated my first stammerer.

His mum (a sonographer) rang a week ago to make the appointment. She'd spoken to a hypnotherapist in London who guaranteed success but apart from that only wanted to talk about money. She decided to bring her son to me instead because although I told her I'd never treated a stammerer and couldn't guarantee anything, I wanted to talk about her son.

So before he came I knew he was 16, ADHD (formal diagnosis, Ritalin) and had dad issues. And he'd had two years of speech therapy.

He came with his mum at 14:00 this afternoon. In fact, they were 15 minutes early. When my son was a chorister there was a boy in the choir who had an awful stammer. That was my only real prior experience. This boy (let's call him Y) was, conservatively, 1,000 times worse. Seriously. He couldn't get five seconds into a sentence before ... well, it was like a switch was thrown and suddenly expression of the word he had meant to say completely left his conscious control. It was the strangest, saddest thing I have ever seen as his entire body convulsed and spasmed as he tried to get control of the word again. The poor kid. It was pitiful. He said it hurt his throat a lot. He got heart cramps four or five times a week. He covered up his feelings but sometimes he was suicidal.

I asked him if he could stop the stammer once it had started, but he had no control over it at all. Just none. It was like a switch was thrown and from there on some kind of pressure built up and up and up until it finally reached a tipping point and he was released. During this he had no control over his head, chest, shoulders, arms or legs. That's right, even his legs would strain in the effort of getting back the control.

I took the case history from him. We got down to his dad and he didn't want to talk about him. I said that was fine but ... well I don't know exactly how it happened but I got him to tell me that the parents separated 13 years previously and dad had been absent until his 15th birthday when he met him in a hotel, got drunk, said lots of nasty things about the boy's mum and attacked Y with his wine bottle. He couldn't say 'dad'. Just impossible. Mind you there were lots of other impossible words too.

Eventually I put him on the couch (with his mum in the room but behind his head) and did a wrist lift. He was nervous and giggly. I told him that was fine and the nerves would burn off. They did.

The wrist lift seemed to work and after a 10-0 countdown (which I carried on running to minus 10 ... why? ... because it felt like the right thing to do) I went for IMRs, and got them. And very strange they were too. They didn't seem to want to go down even when I pressed them.

I explained to Y's subc that I wanted to do two things; stop the stammer (yeah, right, who was I kidding?) and pull the arrow of his dad out of his soul (I'd previously described his history with his dad as being like one of those arrows in a cowboys and Indians movie that's lodged in the flesh and you know it's gonna hurt like hell to pull it out but you have to because the longer it stays there the longer it is before the healing can begin).

And the subc seemed up for it, so off we went.

First I said I thought he was carrying around a lot of unnecessary bitterness, anger, stress and tension, and Y's subc agreed. So I asked if it would be all right to tap it off. Yes. I used the blunt end of a screwdriver behind his left earlobe as the tap and did a five to zero countdown to drain the crap.

Next I made sure that the subc was happy to let him speak easily and smoothly, and then clapped my hands to reset his synapses for comfortable speech.

Yesterday, someone wrote to me saying "I wish I had your confidence." I'm sure she'll read this so I want her and everyone else to know that as I clapped I was thinking "This is going to be awful. It all looks great. His mum is crying buckets. And when I wake him up and ask him how he feels he's going to say 'Fer-f-f-f-f-fi' and then disappear into full body spasm before managing an 'OK'. I just couldn't see any alternative.

When I clapped, he jerked. A real physical jerk.

Then we got down to removing the arrow. I had him do it. His non-IMR hand went to his heart and grappled with the arrow. He started crying. By this stage his mum was a wreck. He had a good grip on the shaft but needed a boost, so I did a three to pull countdown and he yanked it out, then threw it away with such force that I'm in Richmond and the arrow is now in Armenia.

I had the subc check to make sure we'd got rid of all the crap, did a COPE eduction and woke him up.

It all looked so great. His IMRs had been going along checking off the COPE elements without being asked. And I thought 'Now for the big letdown'. Eight, open your eyes, nine, ten, wide awake.

"Where was I? Where have I been?"

His mum, into her fifth tissue, said "You've been on a journey."

"I remember this white light. And there was a lot of pain. Such a lot of pain. Then you pressed something against my neck and it just seemed to go away."

And I'm thinking ... he hasn't stammered. **** ... he hasn't stammered. Shut up now before you blow it! (Forgive me, I'm being really honest here.)

"Why are you upset mum? I could feel how sad you were."

"I kept quiet you so couldn't hear me."

"I couldn't hear you. I just knew. Hey. I can't stammer. It's gone. I can't feel it. Oh wow. What is this? I can't stammer."

At this point, mum and I are sharing the world's most gobsmacked look.

"I want to be a hypnotherapist. Hey. I can say hypno! I couldn't say that before. And my dad's gone."

Mum said "He hasn't been able to say 'dad' for years. Maybe ever."

"It's OK mum. It's ... it's just not there. I can't feel it. I can say ..." and then he proceeded to go through a list of words that had always thrown him into spasm previously. Mum helped herself to another tissue and in my mind I was singing a certain Hot Chocolate number.

Then his mobile rang. "Yeah? Max. Gimme five or ten minutes. I'll call you back. No. Not now. I'm with my hypnotherapist. What cinema? Yeah, maybe. What film? OK. Maybe. I dunno. Let me finish here and ... What? Yeah, I know. It's cool. Gimme ten. Later." Click. "He said 'Hey man, Yo talkin!' I ain't never been able to do that before."

Well there was more. Y chatted for half an hour without a stumble. There were lots of hugs, and a few more tears, and the word 'miracle' came up more than once.

There you go. That's what happened. The dialogue is not word for word verbatim but it's as near as dammit with nothing included for effect.

I don't know if Y will stay as he left, but I know he can be made as he left so even if he slips over the next week I know he's capable (whatever his neurology) of being a non-stammerer. And so does his mum.

Best wishes

barry