Self Advocacy and Self-Disclosure
Hi! I am currently a second year Speech Language Pathology graduate student. While I do not have much for experience in working with individuals who stutter, I am seeing my first client this semester for treatment. With this individual we have talked with them and the caregivers about a goal for self-advocacy. I had found the video by Wanchung Huang about thriving with a stutter to be applicable to this client. In the video the quote “The point is not about stuttering — it is about how you deal with it” stuck out to me. The message I took away from the film was that we have the power to choose how to respond to obstacles that are out of our control. With this in mind and working with my fluency client I want to focus on the fact that everyone has something that makes them different. The video stated that as people we all have our differences, and with my knowledge in self advocacy and disclosure the goal is to work with the client to find their confidence in helping their voice be heard. However with an individual who wants to “just let it happen”, how would you recommend working towards taking action to embrace our differences with fluency clients.
I’m not entirely sure I understand what you mean by individuals who want to “just let it happen” but in relation to a person’s willingness/ability to disclose, sometimes exploring the pros and cons of disclosure within a specific situation can help. For example, I worked with a pharmacology student who was expected to do several poster presentations at professional conferences. This brought about much internal turmoil for her because she didn’t want her stutter to make her appear less intelligent or less prepared than her peers when sharing about her research. Together we explored the pros/cons of disclosing prior to her poster presentations, and she found it to be extremely helpful that she had the power to “remove the elephant in the room,” something she had not considered previously. She then began to spontaneously disclose in other situations (e.g., small group discussions with her lab mates), and she found much freedom and confidence as a communicator by simply disclosing her stutter.
Additionally, I believe that “working towards action” relates to one’s readiness for change, so I would recommend the work of Patricia Zebrowski and Naomi Rodgers on readiness for change. There’s a two-part series based on their work with adolescents which I think may be helpful to you and can be found here: https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00186 and https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-21-00108.
Hi!
When the topics self advocacy and self-discosure are concerned, I can recommend some articles for example Byrd and colleagues, who have done great work related to the topic of self-disclosure. Here a couple of examples:
Byrd, C. T., Croft, R., Gkalitsiou, Z., & Hampton, E. (2017). Clinical utility of self-disclosure for adults who stutter: Apologetic versus informative statements. Journal of Fluency Disorders, 54, 1-13. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfludis.2017.09.001
Byrd, C. T., McGill, M., Gkalitsiou, Z., & Cappellini, C. (2017). The Effects of Self-Disclosure on Male and Female Perceptions of Individuals Who Stutter. American Journal of Speech – Language Pathology (Online), 26(1), 69-80. doi:10.1044/2016_AJSLP-15-0164
Douglass, Jill E., Constantino, Christopher, Alvarado, Jacqueline, Verrastro, Katie, & Smith, Kaitlyn. (2019). Qualitative investigation of the speech-language therapy experiences of individuals who covertly stutter. J Fluency Disord, 61, 105713-105713. doi:10.1016/j.jfludis.2019.105713
Douglass, Jill E., Schwab, Maria, & Alvarado, Jacqueline. (2018). Covert Stuttering: Investigation of the Paradigm Shift From Covertly Stuttering to Overtly Stuttering. Am J Speech Lang Pathol, 27(3S), 1235-1243. doi:10.1044/2018_AJSLP-ODC11-17-0190
Sorry for my short response, but I hope you may find out and explore these aspects when discussing the topic with people who stutter, as well as other professionals.
Best wishes, Hilda