A few days I decided (in 26 years of stuttering) to let myself stutter without fighting it, or using tricks/substitutes, I wish I did so sooner.

A few days I decided (in 26 years of stuttering) to let myself stutter without fighting it, or using tricks/substitutes, I wish I did so sooner. Hey all, I Just wanted to share a little something. For me, it's huge, and perhaps it could help others look at stuttering differently. I've been stuttering since I (m32) was about 6. So about 26 years of stuttering. It literally 'ruined' my (social) life in so many ways. A few days ago, I decided to finally take the step and work on doing something about my stutter. I felt like I HAD to lose fear of my own stutter if I ever wanted to find some peace with it. I decided from that point that I wasn't going to use ANY avoidance behaviour, tricks, substitutes, or anything to 'run' from my stuttering. This is what happened: Normally, I'd block like crazy. But, by 100% allowing my stutter (the repeating of things), the blocks totally disapeared, and instead I would repeat a word/syllable/letter like crazy. For example, I wanted to say "Speaker". "Spea" being the problem part. I would find myself hanging on "Spea". Spea-spea-spea-spea-spea-spea-spea-spea-spea for like 20 times, then finally do "king". "Spea-king". For me, my block are 100% due to me resisting my actual real unfiltered stutter. When I allowed my true stutter to do whatever, I had zero blocks anymore. I then realized something funny (for me). If "Spea" was the problem, why was I actually saying "Spea" flawlessly, 20 times? Obviously I am already saying "Spea" already. "king" wasn't a problem. So I caught myself once repeating something like the example above, but with the word "Cooking". I would go: "Cook-cook-cook-cook-cook-cook-cook". Then I thought to myself, "wait a minute, JUST STOP, and go to 'ing'". COOK-ING. I realized, that I'm already actually saying my problem words, but that I get caught up in a loop, and all I have to do is to remind myself that saying it ONCE is enough, and to consciously tell myself to MOVE ON to the next part. Cook. Ing. Cooking. It's a conscious effort, but it's amazing once you get the hang of it. You're basically stopping yourself from repeating, by telling yourself STOP-> MOVE ON, after you pronounced it once. Now, same goes for letters, instead of syllables/words. I was trying to say "Fence". I felt strongly that the "F" was going to be a problem, but "ence" wouldn't be a problem. Then I found myself saying f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f. The actual "F" which my mind was telling me is the problem. But I was actually saying the "F". 20 times. If the "F" is such a problem, why am I literally saying this exact same "F" flawlessly, but in a loop? I realized, for me personally at least, is that it's almost not even the words/letters that are the problem, but some internal 'thing' telling us to keep looping, even though we literally already pronounced a problematic something, and even though everything after the problematic 'thing'(letter/word/syllable) isn't a problem. I thought to myself, all I need to do is to tell myself, consciously, to STOP right before I start repeating myself and to then consciously tell myself MOVE ON to the next part. I would then go "F. ence" or "Cook. ing" or "Speak. ing". RIght when I feel this urge to loop/repeat, I tell myself consciously to STOP, and move on. It takes A LOT of effort and time to get this new way of thinking ingrained into your habits, so that it becomes 2nd nature, but this also makes me believe that (my own) stuttering is largely just habitual to begin with. Somehow when I was 6 or so, I learned this habit, and I got stuck in it. So for a few days now, I've been working on being super conscious of every time my speech wants to repeat words/letters/syllables. So now, if I don't forgot to be aware of this, I tell myself "STOP->MOVE ON NOW" every time I feel the need to loop/repeat a letter/word/syllable. F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-ence, becomes: F.ence Cook-cook-cook-cook-cook-cook-cook-ing becomes: Cook.ing Spea-spea-spea-spea-spea-spea-spea-speaker becomes: spea.ker S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-peaker becomes: S.peaker and so on and so forth. The more I do this, the more comfortable I become with speaking, and it's almost like "I know" I don't HAVE to repeat/loop, but that for now, it takes conscious effort to reprogram my speech by reminding: stop->move on now. You're most likely already pronouncing the problem words/letters/syllables, and 'just' need to tell yourself to move on. It's a real conscious effort, but eventually, in time, I think this can becomes second nature, just like how stuttering itself has becomes second nature. I just felt like sharing this. I don't mean to sound like we're all the same or that this is a cure, but it's helping me immensely, and felt like sharing as it might help someone else, too. I hope I wasn't too vauge or anything. Just drop a comment if you'd like to talk about this. Thanks for reading.