Avoidance strategies and funny misunderstandings

Avoidance strategies and funny misunderstandings Hello guys ! I'm so happy I just found this sub, I hope every one is doing fine and that successive quarantines did not worsen your speech pattern too much ! I've been wanting to speak about this topic for a long time but I don't have a lot of people who could understand around me ! So I've become what I would call a *mild* stutterer: my stutter is now maybe 80% made of relatively short speech block events. What this means is that, negotiating the (permanent) use of avoidance strategies, I can navigate daily life without ever having to tell anyone about my speech issues. But the constant use of avoidance strategies means that all my daily life interactions are built on a lot of "funny" misunderstandings. Obviously when people do not know you have speech issues, they will explain any of your weird behavior by something that makes sense to them. It also doesn't help that I am comically bad at improvising when I haven't had the time to pick a *act like a perfectly normal think is happening* strategy. So I guess I just wanted to share some misunderstandings that happen to me all the time: * People thinking you have hearing issues. One reflex I have (don't know why I picked this one) to buy some time is to ask people to repeat things, or to pretend I haven't heard. Even "funnier" I guess is when I finally manage to answer before the person repeats, which does not make any sense. * People thinking you're shy. I guess this one is OK because I am actually shy, It just puts a lot more on my shyness than it is actually responsible for. * People thinking you don't know answers. Maybe I don't know, or maybe the answer I have starts with an "a" and saying "I don"t know" is easier, or saying "mmmmmh" until I can finally formulate it is easier. (Obviously a lot harder to pull off for things that I am supposed to know, like my name etc.). * People thinking you don't **want to** answer. When I just can't do it I can suddenly change subject, point towards something else that is happening around us etc. lol More: acting weird and / or dumb, or like you have an attitude, or are being rude (I feel extremely bad when I look at someone in the eyes and do not answer their "Hello!", but what can I do), are ignoring them etc. I think this is almost comical how so much of my daily life behavior that people must interpret as being the result of my mood, the way I feel about them / about myself, or any actual meaningful cause is just the result of sound pronunciation technicalities lol. So how about you guys ? Do you sometimes just pause and wonder how many completely wrong things people could read in your interactions with them ? Does it bother you ? What are some funny misunderstandings that happened to you ? Have a nice day !! (oh no this was a very long post, sorry)