Addendum to my last post

In my last post, I had complained about a reply I had gotten on one of my videos on YouTube. The same person commented with this on my previous reply:
All i am trying to say is that... from my "perspective" SD isn't a big deal. Alot of people think stuttering isn't a big deal, but you say you stutter, and you know how it really is. I am saying compared to stuttering, it doesn't "SEEM" like a big deal. Like i said in my first post "I AM NOT SURE" if it's like my stuttering, the psycological affects.

I dropped the conversation on my YouTube video because I obviously wasn't going to make any headway with this guy. I made it quite obvious what the psychological effects could be from SD, but apparently he has a one-track mind. I'm not understanding why it's so important to make your disorder/disability/condition appear so much worse than that of someone else. If you "aren't sure" how a disorder affects someone psychologically, why profess that your disorder is so much worse?

I'm of the opinion that a disability is what you make of it. If you want to dwell and wallow in self pity, that's your prerogative, but it isn't doing you any good. It isn't doing you any good to proclaim that you've got it so much worse. Understand what your disability is and work through it. Find other venues. For example, I can't reliably work with the public, so I got training to work in medical transcription. I now work from home, and most of my communication is done via chat programs or email. Will this work for everyone? No, there are certainly some disabilities that are harder to overcome. But it's a lot healthier to have a positive outlook on things than negative regardless of what may ail you. It's downright unhealthy to have a negative attitude about everything, and especially to take said attitude out on other people--including other people who may relate to you.

Furthermore, the same type of disability can affect one person worse than another. Some people don't let things get them down too much, and other people dwell on it for years. This is the same for any traumatic event. I like to think that I handle SD really well now. At first I was hurt and confused. I didn't know what I had. I didn't know why I could only talk at a whisper. It took three years for me to get a proper diagnosis. However, it should not matter how I personally handle my issues, because things affect everyone differently. So while it might not seem like a "big deal" to have SD to you, it could mean everything to someone else. Not me, though--I don't let it define who I am. That's not to say it isn't a big part of my life. I can't finish reading a children's book to my two daughters without my voice cutting out. I wouldn't be able to work at a drive-thru at a fast food restaurant, and I often let my husband take care of my ordering for me when we go out places. People think I'm snubbing them or that I'm angry at them because I don't talk much, but it's really that I can't speak.

I've managed to do a lot with SD. There are a lot of famous and successful stutterers. Beethoven, one of the world's greatest composers, still wrote and created music after he became deaf. A disability is an obstacle, but not necessarily a wall. And it's up to the individual to decide which they believe it is.

And that's about all I have to say on the matter :).

In other news, I managed to track down my voice exercise sheet that I received from my speech therapist a couple of years ago. Since we moved over the summer it went MIA, but while looking through some boxes for some tax documents I managed to find it. I'll take up doing my exercises on a more regular basis again.