Big stakeholder presentation tomorrow. Just going over and addressing thoughts in my head.

Big stakeholder presentation tomorrow. Just going over and addressing thoughts in my head. After getting laid off a year ago, I find myself in my thirties and back in school taking design classes to upgrade my education and hopefully start a new career. Tomorrow is big presentation day where my group and I will do a 20 minute verbal presentation in front of stakeholders from my work-study and in front of my entire class. I thought I was done with oral presentations but here I am. My new field is very heavy on presentations and it's something I've learned to get used to and adjust, but that doesn't mean I've stopped feeling pangs of anxiety and nervousness whenever I'm faced with presentations/talking out loud/etc. I've done like 10 presentations since fall and each one does get better. It sucks to go through it but I feel so proud of myself afterwards. The anxiety I feel is not nearly as bad as the episodes I experienced in grade school and on. At my age, I'm way more comfortable with who I am as a person who stutters. What other choice do I have right? My stutter is a 3 or 4 on a scale 1 to 10 with 10 being most serious, 5 being moderate and 1 being barely there. I have good and bad days like the rest of you do. Tomorrow will assuredly be a mildly bad one, but still a far cry from what i used to go through back in high school where I felt completely frozen, embarrassed and so depressed. Right now, I'm going through my pre-presentation ritual of going to bed early, meditation, taking my vitamins, having a light work out, watching King's Speech (lol) and practicing the shit out of my portion of the presentation until reciting becomes second nature. Practicing over and over and over is the only thing that I've found to be truly effective. I missed my toastmasters meeting the other day, which i discovered to be super helpful as it's a great opportunity to practice with people who will not judge you at all. With regard to my stutter, I'm realizing it's just old fear creeping back. I'm realizing that I was always conditioned to feel like I want to internally freak out whenever I'm faced with stuff like presentations. Now I feel like I have more mental tools and tricks to rationalize the fear with and I'm better at sort of channeling the stress and anxiety into feeling hopeful, strong and proactive instead of automatically giving up and feeling helpless. It took me a long, long time to cultivate this inner strength because it took a long, long time to rediscover my sense of self-value. Sure, I know I will always stutter to some degree but I look at the remarkable progress I've made since my parents first sent me to speech therapy all the way back when I was aged 10. I could barely say my own name and now I can bang out presentations albeit a little nerve-wracked but much, much better. Thanks to the gulf of time between my childhood and now, I can see so much improvement and that's living proof that this struggle does get easier. Plus, as you age, you will just not care as much because there will be way more important stuff to care about in Life and I guess in a funny, ironic way when you finally figure out that you're caring less about your stutter, you will actually start stuttering less too. Sometimes I need a break from this sub because I just don't want to obsess about it anymore. And sometimes, when I'm faced with a little obstacle/opportunity like tomorrow's presentation, I feel really lucky that I can go on this sub and express myself a little bit to settle my thoughts and work through some shit. We're all so hard on ourselves sometimes. Nobody is as critical about our stutter than us and it's good and healthy to step back and away from it and breathe and tell yourself the truth that it's not so bad and it's not the end of the world and YES! it will get better! Gently come back to it, and practice, practice, practice in front of friends and family and take risks and put yourself out there in scary situations and you and your stutter will have no choice but to adapt, to improve, to overcome. You don't have to waste time like I did when I was younger and avoiding situations. You can start now and challenge yourself and begin feeling proud of the fact that you are throwing yourself into battle after battle. You will grow thick skin because of it. You will become more confident. It's a muscle that you have to keep training. Take it from an old fart like me and keeping fucking fighting and keep leveling up that courage and watch as the little victories and xp points begin to stack up.