Losing Your Identity To Aphasia | James Behre

Losing Your Identity To Aphasia | James Behre

Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? Here, the focus shifts to life after a very different kind of loss – the loss of language and identity following a stroke. Stroke survivor James Behre sits down with host Bill Gasiamis to talk about living with aphasia after a stroke at 68, and what it feels like when your voice no longer matches the person you know yourself to be.

James explains bluntly, “I can no longer be the narrator of my own life… aphasia, the real identity theft,” capturing the heartbreak of knowing exactly who you are but struggling to say it out loud. You’ll hear James describe the morning of his stroke, the shock of being told he’d had one despite no paralysis, and the long, exhausting slog of relearning how to speak, read and even count.

Once a confident public speaker and creative problem-solver, he now finds that “talking for any length of time wears me out” and that even writing “takes forever” because he “writes exactly how I talks”. Bill gently teases out the emotional side too – the embarrassment, the fear of looking “stupid”, and the invisible deficits like poor concentration and sensory overload that others can’t see.

There’s a powerful moment when Bill challenges James to become “the tortoise instead of the hare”, slowing down his speech to save energy and make communication easier, turning a frustrating limitation into a practical strategy. This conversation is honest, sometimes funny in a dry way, and very real about how aphasia can blow up someone’s sense of self.

Yet it’s also quietly hopeful: James is writing a book, learning about his condition, and came on a speech-heavy show precisely because, as he says, “if I can get them to say, ‘oh, yeah, I felt that way,’ then I’ve done my job.” If you’ve ever felt you’ve lost who you are after illness, this story might make you feel a little less alone.