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From: Ryan Pollard
Date: 02 Oct 2012
Time: 14:33:22 -0500
Remote Name: 69.116.220.90
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Peter. Your point about physiological stress affecting fluency is certainly borne out by your recent experience. Sickness, fatigue, exhaustion, they all can make it more difficult to manage stuttering, no doubt. And that temporary regression into undesirable behaviors (in your case, more stuttering/less speech control) is one of several ways that one could think about relapse. I’m not familiar with Selye’s work on stress, but I’ll make it a point to read up on it. I love your suggestions for new terminology for labeling ourselves! Kevin Eldridge, in his audio clip, talks about using the term PWSS (Person Who Stutters, Sometimes) http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad16/papers/paths16/eldridge16.html I agree with you that our current terminology does reinforce that “stuttering identity” concept that I talk about in the paper. In my experience, once that identity takes hold and becomes incorporated into one’s self-concept, it can be VERY hard to ever relinquish. Of course, some people don’t want to relinquish it. Instead, they learn to accept, and even celebrate, their stuttering identity, sort of wearing it as a badge of honor. That’s a completely valid choice, and can be quite liberating. Others would rather take your route and try to turn stuttering from a constant, defining factor into something that they occasionally do (with the goal perhaps of further refining it into something that they seldom do). This can also be liberating, just in a different way.