I believe that mine is a confidence thing. My brother, mum, uncle, gran all have one but it’s barely noticeable. They will have a brief block every once in a while and that’s it. Mines a lot worse and I’ve always struggled to understand why. I think it’s down to the anxiety surrounding it. I was first teased about my stutter and lisp when I was 8. From there, I started getting self conscious and understand that I wasn’t normal. Finding it hard to make friends in high school, I spent the first two years (11 and 12) staying in on the weekends. The lack of socializing would of worsened it. My parents also never spoke to me about it so it always felt like the elephant in the room. In my case, the more confidence I gain, the less my stutter becomes. I’m 22 now, working as a kitchen manager, I get pushed out of my comfort zone a lot and I’ve now started doing it independently. Yesterday, I sat on the phone for an hour trying to sort out electricity bills (I hate phone calls). Yes I stuttered, I got asked my name about 10 times. It got to a point that I didn’t stutter because I was too focused on sorting out my bills. Im not sure of there will ever be a cure for stuttering, but I do think they will find medication to boost confidence and lessen the surrounding anxiety. My advice to everyone who’s struggling is, find some confidence, it doesn’t need to be in speech. Once you get confident in one area (for example, playing an instrument), you’ll start to learn how to move that confidence elsewhere. Second piece of advice, push yourself and develop a military Sargent inner voice (this helps me get out of my comfort zone and keeps negative thoughts away)