welcome! i hear ya, i've been there. honestly, what has helped me the most over the years is accepting that i have a stutter and appreciating/loving myself and not being bothered by it. easier said than done of course! i'm 30 now, it's taken me about 28 or 29 years to feel that way :-D strangely enough, the harder i try to speak fluently usually more pressure and tension follows (someone related it to a chinese finger trap on this sub, i thought it was a brilliant analogy.). so, i try now to accept the identity of a stutterer now and focus more on "communication" rather than "fluency". i think that, mentally, that has made me healthier and has allowed communication to follow more easily. and i'm sorry that you had to go through all of that -- most people don't really know how to react to someone that stutters since it is so rare, so you'll get these comments that just seem ridiculous and show that they don't understand the root of it at all! in my opinion, a stutter hardens you and makes you more compassionate, i think you'll become a better person in the long run! good luck with everything!