Hm. Those don't look mutually exclusive. They also look like they might as well be identical. They seem to point to the same general area but not necessarily be in competition or at odds. I suppose the only way of knowing would be inferring a bunch of stuff from a detailed personal history, but even then, we'd have no substantial guarantee for interpreting things correctly. Instead of positing only those two options above, wouldn't it make more sense to consider it a practical fact, and then working out if something could be changed? I mean, in so far as anything's causing a problem, of course. If we often sit and wish we could be doing something else, that's certainly something to consider. We're not necessarily faced with 'identity' or 'condition', though.   There's this approach, when dealing with something like stutter, that we're not the "real" us because of (again) something like stutter, and that somehow, if we removed (said) stutter, we would be the "real" us finally. I don't think that kind of view is a fruitful way of looking at things. It's probably more healthy to start thinking about other situations we'd like to pursue, or concrete ways in which we might conceivably try to alter our current situation(s). - In short, I guess what I'm saying is - it doesn't really matter what you interpret your context as, if you're not going to *do* anything with it, or *use* it for something. That's a bit more constructive, innit? :)