Sunday Link Roundup

June 1, 2014 by

Just a few interesting things to share with you this Sunday in the world of Stuttering. Also, for this site, I’ll get started on my college experience this week. Should be fun …

Pamela Mertz at Make Room for the Stuttering visited ninth graders to talk about stuttering and her career

She says:

The kids were great. I had to do my presentation 6 times to 6 different groups, so I was tired by day’s end, but the kids were engaging and asked lots of good questions. They were curious about stuttering. Some mentioned that they have a sibling or cousin who stutters. Their questions were thoughtful.

Darren Sproles of the Philadelphia Eagles stutters. This article is mostly football-related (he was traded from the Saints to the Eagles), but they briefly mention his stutter.

He says:

“I only stutter when I’m nervous,” Sproles said. “That’s pretty much it. When I’m on the football field, I’m not stuttering. When I’m at home with my family, I’m not stuttering. It’s when there’s a camera in my face or (sitting for an interview).”

And here’s more on Darren from ESPN.

Edge of Tomorrow starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt is coming out in a week.

Blunt talks about acting and stuttering.

She says:

“It was the most intuitive thing, and he was right: the only way I could speak fluently was to be someone else,” she explained to The Sunday Telegraph’s Stella magazine. “It alienates you in some ways if you have trouble communicating. It wasn’t that I got bullied horribly about it, although kids definitely had a go sometimes.” But that’s not to say she’s 100% cured; “It comes back if I’m tired or stressed,” she explained.

Of course you can read more about her stutter here and here.

Lastly, the Stuttering Foundation added George Springer to their list of famous people who stutter:

Here’s a great article with plenty of quotes and insight from Springer.

He says:

“I was extremely fortunate to be around a great group of kids,” Springer recalled. “They understood it. Every once in a while, someone would laugh or something like that. At the same time, I would laugh, too. There was never anybody or anyone or anything that affected me. They understood that I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t try to do it. That’s been the prime focus for me, to get past it. It is what it is. You can’t let it prohibit you from going out and living a life.

Filed Under: Link Roundup, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Covert and Overt Stuttering

May 30, 2014 by

I’m trying to understand this covert and overt thing a little better. Remember that I haven’t talked to anybody about my stuttering (until now, basically) so the terminology and labeling is … well, interesting.

Tony mentioned it on his blog the other day:

I use fluency tricks to hide my stuttering because I want to sound like people who are fluent. Does this mean that I am ashamed of stuttering? Perhaps. That would be a matter between me and my therapist, if I had one. 🙂 Does this mean that I don’t accept my stutter? Not at all. I accept is as much as a person must accept that he has only one leg or one eye. I AM A STUTTERER. See? There, I wrote it. I am not delusional. 😛 I am okay with reality. However, this does not mean that I have to be okay with stuttering. There is a difference, in my opinion.

I think the covert-overt thing is kind of funny at times. Because, what, you’re basically covert until you stutter … then the cat’s out of the bag, right? I mean, sure, the Starbucks barista doesn’t know I stutter (and of course I didn’t get what I wanted because I was afraid of stuttering when I ordered it) but after meeting a new person at work and talking to them off and on for a week, I’m probably going to stutter. Then what? Maybe they’ll just think that I was nervous or couldn’t find the right word and stumbled over it? So they don’t think that I completely stutter? I suppose that’s being covert, sure. Or maybe they’ll realize it and not think anything of it?

So for some people I’m covert, and others I’m overt?

Here’s the definition from the Stuttering Foundation at the Guidelines (An excerpt of Chapter 23 from the book Advice to Those Who Stutter)

There appear to be two main types of stutterers: (1) the covert stutterer who attempts to avoid contacts with feared words and situations that might identify him as a possible stutterer to his listeners and (2) the overt stutterer who struggles laboriously through word after word as he communicates. Which one are you?

Right.

So I guess in my mind, I’m a covert stutterer, and in reality, I’m overt. I think this is part of the iceberg — ok, sure, I stutter, but I don’t want the listener to identify me as someone who stutters. As in, when the conversation is done, and they talk to their friends, they don’t say something like, “oh, you know, Rehan, the guy upstairs who stutters?”

I think lately (past 5 years or so) I’ve been more overt because well, I have things at work I just have to say. And I’ve noticed that people don’t seem to mind the stutter on a few words here and there.

Here’s another older article that touches on it. And this might explain why I didn’t do speech therapy all the way through school.

For MacIntyre, as long as she could replace words, or avoid situations where she knew she would block, she said, she could hide her problem from everyone, including her parents. “I was a walking thesaurus,” she said. When MacIntyre was in grade school, she was already showing signs of stuttering. But when a specialist told her mother to ignore the symptoms, MacIntyre began consciously masking her stutter. Her parents assumed she had simply grown out of it.

I’m curious how other people label themselves and their subsequent behavior. I’m guessing someone who’s overt doesn’t preface every conversation with “look, I stutter, so bear with me.” Or do they?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Maya Angelou’s Stuttering Brother

May 29, 2014 by

Maya Angelou passed away yesterday. The Stuttering Foundation brought up an interesting fact about her and her brother regarding how she got her name.

Working as a Calypso dancer at the San Francisco club The Purple Onion, Angelou, performing as Marguerite Johnson or Rita at the time, was told she needed a more theatrical stage name. By combining “Maya,” the name her stuttering brother Bailey had given her when they were children, and a variation of her ex-husband’s last name, she became “Maya Angelou.”

The Foundation then posed the question on their Facebook page about changing our own names. Is this something you would do?

For me? I wouldn’t change my name. But maybe the way it’s pronounced …

My name is Rehan. Growing up in the States, I pronounced it as the ‘re’ in ‘return’ and the ‘han’ as in ‘con.’ As someone who stutters, my name definitely gives me the hardest time. I’ll probably fill a week’s worth of posts on it, but the short version is that it only comes out with enormous effort. Any kind of introduction — in person or on the phone — is the worst.

When I came to Saudi 3.5 years ago for work, I actually changed the way I pronounced my name because the way that I’ve been pronouncing it is not the way a native Arabic speaker pronounces it.

The word Rehan is actually an Arabic word meaning something like a scent or odor. (A good one).

For a native Arabic speaker, the first syllable sounds more like “ray” than “ree.” But it’s not really “ray,” because you’re softly bouncing your tongue off the roof of your mouth. It’s a sound that’s not in the English language. The second syllable also comes more from the throat. Anyway, it’s a totally different pronunciation, and basically a totally different word to me. More importantly it’s a different word to my brain as well. My brain seems hell-bent on stuttering on the usual pronunciation of my name, but in the first year or two of coming to Saudi, it didn’t get as hung up on the new pronunciation.

Things in years 3 and 4 are sort of leveling out, but saying the “Arabic” pronunciation isn’t too rough for whatever reason. Even on the phone. The funny thing is that I use a different pronunciation based on the listener — if they’re a native English speaker, I’ll use the version I’ve grown up with. And stutter. I do this because they are used to those sounds and pronunciation. If it’s someone from Saudi/India/Pakistan, I’ll use the more Arabic pronunciation. Make sense?

Did I change my name to try to hide my stutter? Maybe so. But I’m saying it to some people the way they would say it anyway. And it’s easier for me! And just getting through my name right off the bat builds a huge amount of confidence.

So what is the deal with saying our own names — and why is it so difficult? Here’s on take from an old posting on the Stuttering Forum:

Basically, we can’t substitute our names.

And of course when we do stutter on our names — don’t you know your own name?! — a Reddit thread.

Lastly, I found some very inspirational quotes from Maya Angelou as well:

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Well, my stuttering is a long untold story. So now it’s slowly coming out. And it does feel great.

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”

I’d say that this nicely summarizes the long term mission of this site.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Sunday Link Roundup

May 25, 2014 by

Hope everybody had a nice weekend. I had a good time going on a long bike ride which I’ll post on in a little while. Stuttering had a lot do with it … as it does with everything, I guess.

Anyway, one thing that I’d like to start doing is a link roundup. So here’s my first attempt. These are all worthy of a follow-up post (or 3) so those will come over the next few weeks. Some of these are slightly old (more than a week) but great nonetheless.

How People Who Stutter Thrive in Everyday Life

A nice write up by someone who stutters on the Stuttering Foundation’s annual gala.

Wahl writes, “The room we were in had an uplifting, comforting air to it. Everyone was welcoming. Everyone had a passion about the topic of stuttering whether it was conducting research on it, writing about it or simply working with others who stutter.

My heartbeat normally races in social settings but here, my heartbeat slowed. I felt at at peace in their company.”

Definitely looking forward to the NSA’s annual conference — I think it’ll be a similar experience for me.

Teaching Elementary Students

While this blog hasn’t been updated in a while, there’s a recent post regarding teaching children. I’ve got three kids of my own, and I don’t stutter as much when talking or reading to them.

Stuttering Stanley writes, ” Some have asked me how can one be a teacher…with a stutter? For me, it is because I mostly do not stutter when I am speaking in front of others, especially with children in a teaching capacity, and I also stutter much less in professional situations. If you want to know the reason why, I am afraid that I can’t tell you.”

Exactly.

The iceberg analogy of stuttering was recently posted on the Stuttering Foundation’s facebook page. Here is more information about it.

I’ll have more on this because it’s basically what this site is all about — how my own iceberg has formed over the years.

And lastly, the conference schedule is out!

Filed Under: Link Roundup, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,