Resilience
Hello, my name is Carson and I am studying speech pathology at the University of Akron. I noticed when looking over the papers that many of the writers had discussed the topic of resiliency. I was wondering if a person who stutters feels they would be equally resilient if they did not stutter, or if that trait has been acquired through overcoming the hardships they have faced?
Hello, Carson. Thank you so much for asking a question to the professional panel. Congratulations on your studies! This is a lovely field and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I have. Keep up the good work, and well done on already being a part of the stuttering community on the world stage by participating in this panel discussion and asking this question. I am honored to answer this for you.
The topic of resilience is one of my favorites to discuss. Your question would have probably served better in the PWS panel, however, I do have a journey both as a professional and a PWS so this worked out well. 🙂 I will quickly share- I am the sibling of a person who stutters as my brother has stuttered since the age of 6. I am a speech-language pathologist with him as my motivation going into this field. I am 37 years old. I share this with you because I started to stutter at the age of 36 due to a hypoxic brain injury, which we call, neurogenic stuttering or neurogenic disfluencies (I have heard and seen it called both.) I have only been a person who stutters for four months, and the stuttering experience/journey is very individualized. No two people who stutter are exactly the same (just like no two people in life in general with any entity are exactly the same or react to the same thing in the same way.) So, my answer to your question is based on my experience and journey with stuttering, and does not reflect the experience of someone that grew up being a person who stutters. Regarding resiliency, I feel like people who do not stutter and people who do stutter (people in general, for that matter) define resiliency based on their life experiences. Being resilient, to you, may reflect a particular experience… whereas being resilient for a person who stutters may or may not have to do with stuttering. As a clinician, do not assume that a person who stutters defines resilience based on stuttering. Ask this person how they personally define resilience and how this makes an impact on communication situations and confidence to communicate in their life. For me, resilience has more to do with a medical diagnosis that I have had my entire life, and not stuttering- but again I have only stuttered for four months. So the moral of this answer: listen to the person that you are treating fully and ask what terms, especially a term like this, means to them particularly. This will help you in establishing a beautiful therapeutic alliance and a trust relationship. I hope that this helps in answering your question. Be well, stay safe, and be a world changer- you already are in participating in this panel.