STANDING up and speaking in a busy town centre can be a daunting experience for anyone.

Now imagine doing that if you have a stammer.

Tom Edgar has lived with a stammer, or stutter, since secondary school, but he told the Courier that there was a lot more to it than simply struggling to get words out.

He said: “I think it is something that makes us different and makes it hard for us to fit in.

“You cannot do something that even a small child can do and that is the perception in the mind of a lot stutterers.

“With that comes a lot of psychological baggage, self-hate, guilt and shame, and a lot of this kind of thing.

“You can imagine a stutter as an iceberg.

“You can see the demonstrable word repetition or avoidance or things like that, but you do not see all the psychological baggage under the waterline that comes along with it.

“I am able to speak quite confidently and in control with it but that was not always the case.

“It was not until I started coming to terms with it and speaking about it that I have actually got some fluency as a result.”

Tom, who serves in the Royal Navy, previously tried speech therapy with the NHS.

However, he told the Courier that it “very quickly becomes a comfort zone”, whereby he started being able to speak to the speech therapist. But, once he left the room, he was not any further forward.

It was 10 years ago that he tried the McGuire Programme, which aims to teach people how to overcome stammering and learn the communication skills needed to thrive.

Set up in 1994 and named after founder David McGuire, it stresses that there is “no cure” for stuttering but that the programme helps people “reach the point where they have overcome their stutter”.

Now used from the United Kingdom and Ireland to Greece, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand, the programme consists of an intensive three to four-day course, along with extensive follow-up support to help people who stutter and want to overcome it.

Those who sign up are told to realise and accept that overcoming a stutter is difficult, while also being provided with new mental or physical habits to overcome bad habits.

Tom, who lives in Haddington with partner Denise and stepson Sebastian, said: “It is quite daunting and you finish with public speaking.

“You stand on a soap box in a city centre – I did one in Bristol – and stand in the town centre.

“You say you have got a stutter and some people walk by and some people, they don’t care, but more for the individual that is doing it, it is quite empowering.”

Tom grew up in Moniaive, north-west of Dumfries.

He remembers having a stutter in secondary school and getting picked on a little bit.

However, he would not say anything back in case it drew further attention to him.

Now, he is encouraging anyone with a stutter or stammer to speak out about it.

Tom, 34, said: “It can be the most isolating thing and you can feel like you are the only person in the world with a stammer.

“But one in 100 people has a stutter or stammer.

“I would love for someone to read this and think: ‘I’m not the only one.’

“I would recommend the McGuire Programme but just reaching out for support from someone is a good start, or just to speak about it.

“I thought I got by well enough most of the time and did not even speak to my parents about it.

“When I did, it was such a liberating thing to speak about it honestly.

“We all have something that makes us a little bit different; it does not need to be a stutter.”

Tom stressed that his journey was not over and he still had bumps along the way.

He said: “I’m trying to make up for lost time a little bit.

“I first joined the programme wanting to be a normal fluent speaker and now I have switched my mindset.

“I want to be better than normal. I use it as a bit of a superpower and being better that average.”