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From: Cathy Olish
Date: 07 Oct 2009
Time: 19:58:41 -0500
Remote Name: 68.61.237.97
Bryan, thanks for your comments and I know you can relate to wanting to hide. No matter how overt or covert we are, we all want to hide, or not stutter at some point or another. We all want to just blend in and not be different from others, at least when we speak. There is no argument that people who are covert and overt often have the same emotions when it comes to stuttering - the fear, shame and embarassment. THe difference in people who are covert (since this is a paper on covert stuttering) is that you don't always hear the stuttering but the emotions are there. Think of it as an iceberg - with an overt PWS, the iceberg is mostly above the water and you see and hear the stuttering much more with the emotions hidden under the water. With a covert PWS, you only see the tip of the iceberg above the water and you can't hear much stuttering - the emotions are still hidden under the water but with a much greater level of fear, shame, embarassment, etc. even though we stutter (or let our stutter be seen) less. I hope this gives you a good idea of the differences between covert and overt!