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From: Maggie Mitchell
Date: 10/17/03
Time: 1:34:05 AM
Remote Name: 24.197.202.60
Hi Woody and Janet! I want to first thank you for taking the time to write the article/paper and sharing it with others!
I am a graduate student in speech pathology and am truly fascinated with all that I am learning in my stuttering course this semester. I also read Larry Molt's article/paper on anxiety disorders and stuttering and these two papers just ring together in my head... perhaps it is because I am also taking a class on death and dying (with a midterm tonight) and the information about encounters and attitudes is permanently etched into my brain. In my death and dying class we learned about how our encounters with death shape our attitudes about it, which in turn further shape our encounters with death. This cycle can definately be applied to any process of life, not just death. After reading these two papers and taking the course in stuttering this semester, I definately feel that this cycle can be applied to stuttering, whether it is in terms of anxiety or PTSD.
The encounters that the person who stutters has (good or bad) are going to affect their attitudes about their stuttering. I think this is why so many children don't have negative thoughts about it until they get to school where they have negative experiences. After we have these negative encounters, we then associate the negative feelings with the situation that caused them (stuttering, in this case). We want to avoid the bad feelings, so we avoid the cause and decrease our encounters (in stuttering, wiht other people). Some people have positive experiences and have relatively few negative attitudes. Other people have had the negative encounters and have worked past the negative attitudes.
I definately feel that the cycle I learned about in my death and dying class where a person's encounters (or lack thereof) shapes their attitudes about death which further shapes their future encounters is very applicable to stuttering. I just hope that one day I can make enough sense to help my clients see that if they are using a dissociation mechanism as a way to defend themselves and protect themselves from the pain, that this is only adding fuel to the fire. I truly believe that all people need to take responsibility for the things that are happening in their lives, be them good or bad, be them caused by genetics or by an environmental factor, and work through them. Then we can move on and change our attitudes about the situation and hopefully our encounters too...