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From: Laura Casado
Date: 19 Oct 2012
Time: 13:20:07 -0500
Remote Name: 131.125.101.148
This is my second year in Graduate school studying speech language pathology. First of all, I will like to thank you for sharing this story with us. I came across your article as I searched this site and as I read I just kept thinking that I can relate in some way to you and your wife on your trip to Croatia. I am not a person who stutters but English is not my native language. I came to the United States at the age of 10 from the Dominican Republic. As a native speaker of Spanish, coming to the United States to learn a new language proved to be a very difficult situation for me. The first few months being here in the U.S., I avoided speaking situations (in English) at all costs. I was afraid to participate in the classroom or speak with my peers. My negative reactions (as you mentioned in your article) were the reactions of my peers. They would laugh and giggle when I had to speak in class, and sometimes said mean things to me as I walked around the hallways. I remember them making fun of the way that I pronounced things which just made my life a living hell. Til this day in Graduate school, when I have to talk in front of my peers who are mostly English speakers, I start sensing the discomfort building inside of me. The panic, the nerves of messing up or of not being understood overwhelm me and I become disfluent. I feel my tongue not being able to make the sounds that I want it to make. As you mentioned, approach-avoidance conflicts are a mysterious phenomenon. I find it fascinating and intriguing the way that your mind and your body can have such an impact on everything that an individual does.