Strip Shortcode function not working?

I’ve built a custom word count script that is supposed to return the Word Count of the post. I’m trying to get it to remove shortcodes, but when I add the strip_shortcodes function, it removes everything between the shortcodes and not just the shortcodes themselves. Below is my script:

function ic_word_count() {
    global $post;
    return str_word_count( strip_tags( strip_shortcodes( $post->post_content ) ) );
}

Any ideas?