Many people become affected by different levels of stress. This stress may be caused by worrying about money, work, relationships, health, family, holidays, moving house or many other daily issues. For certain people who live life with a stuttering problem, stress can have an altogether different meaning. As well as worrying about all of the above issues they have many other things to stress about, things that fluent people just take for granted and see as very simple tasks/events.
I will take as an example a young man who is eighteen years of age, I will call him Peter. Peter has had a problem with his speech for as long as he can remember and has what is known as a stutter or stammer. Despite attending regular speech therapy classes, Peter has continued to be affected by this form of speech impediment and is starting to become very concerned about the future.
The first area of concern for Peter is his career prospects. He worries that quite a lot of employers may be reluctant to employ somebody who has a speech impediment and even if he is able to gain employment he worries about how he will cope in the workplace when he is unable to talk fluently. Routine tasks...