Susca (PhD) states: >No, I didn’t have covert symptoms during my enhanced fluency period, but you did hit on something: acceptance that I no longer stuttered. In the second 25 years of my life it was almost like looking backwards over my shoulder for the stutter to come back, especially since my workload was so much with people who stutter (PWS) who had relapsed and I had severely relapsed in my own history. As a clinician, for those who achieve effortless and natural fluency, many are uncomfortable and “unaccepting” of their newfound fluency (all else being equal). Think about it: if you’ve only known yourself as a person who struggles to speak, speaking without the struggle is going to feel “weird” (with or without strategies.) \[This may be a poor metaphor: imagine living your first 10 years hobbling around with a smooth stone in your shoe and then walking without the stone in your shoe: it would not be what you had know up to that point in your life and would take some adjustment(s) to walk around (not hobbling) without the stone in your shoe.\] My point is, sometimes it takes many forms of adjustment (physical, mental, emotional, social, etc.) to make a change in your self-perception or sense of self. It is usually not a unidimensional change. I would guess what is changed and how integral to who you are also plays a role in the change process (a stone is nowhere near a stutter.) What influences/ed that “new identity”?—I don’t know. I just know it was a process of change and for people who stutter and make changes with their speech or their relation with their speech, allow time to process and adjust to the change, whether it be acceptance, management of the stutter, fluency, or anything else. It’s a process, not an on/off light switch.