Passing As Fluent

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Re: Passing as Fluent

From: Terry Dartnall
Date: 10/9/03
Time: 12:02:05 AM
Remote Name: 132.234.9.71

Comments

“Was the lecture format of university teaching the attraction for your career path?”

That’s a nice question, and it’s made me think. I think the answer is “yes.” Not to begin with. To begin with I was scared stiff by the prospect of teaching—but I got a real buzz out of it when I discovered I could teach. I suppose that finding I could be fluent when I lectured was a liberating experience for me.

I’d like to expand on that, because it’s helping me. My stammer is sometimes associated with a sense of “mental crowding,” of overload. I hate noisy places, especially places where the noise seems to boom and echo. In shopping malls, for instance. Now what’s nice about lectures is that you can go at your own pace. You’re not crowded or stampeded. You’re in charge. That’s what I like about it. Taking your time. And talking to the students rather than lecturing them.

“Did your analyst help you much?”

He didn’t help me with my speech at all. He adamantly refused to believe I have a stammer. He now accepts that I have what he says is a mild stammer, but he says that I have a hysterical reaction to it. And I think he may be right about this. Maybe that’s what (one type of?) covert stammering is.

Did he help me otherwise? Probably not. I went to him initially because I was having what seemed to be panic attacks every night. He put me onto various sleeping pills (eg Rohypnol), which I became addicted to for years, and it’s only recently that I’ve discovered that the “panic” attacks were probably sleep apnoea attacks, and that my breathing passages really were closing up.

So why did the sleeping pills work? They probably dampened down my body’s alarm system. So I think there’s a profile here. First there’s some underlying physical cause, such as a mild stammer, or sleep apnoea. And then there’s a hysterical reaction to it. One of the ironies is that I’m not a hysterical person. I do extreme sports (hmmm … but when I skydive I lose 5-10 seconds of my life every time, when I first jump out; overload again?)

Terry


Last changed: September 12, 2005