I've almost eliminated it out of my life by not giving a fuck about what other people think about me.

I've almost eliminated it out of my life by not giving a fuck about what other people think about me. A lot of what this sub preaches is to stop caring what other people think about you, learning to accept your impediment and to coexist with it. Although that message is fine and good for most people, I don't subscribe to it. I wanted it gone. It's caused me a great deal of social anxiety, it's caused me a great deal of embarrassment, it's caused me a childhood of introversion, and what pisses me off the most is that **it's caused me to be afraid of speaking, afraid to utilize the best means of communication, diplomacy, and expression of emotion**. I couldn't speak until I was 18. Every sentence was fragmented, most of my words were involuntarily corrupted. Then I moved out of my home town and to university where I learned that not giving a shit about what other people think about you is a factor to college happiness. Now my impediment is mild, I can get around it, I can make it sound intelligent, cute, and when it slips out of my control, I can change my behavior to ensure that I am not expressing distress when other people know that I have it (even if I may feel it internally) I feared I would never get married, or get a job that involved interacting with people because of this fucking demon in my life, but that fear is gone. I'm happy now that not stuttering is no longer the priority of my speech but rather the content of my message is. If I had to give a piece of advice, it would be to practice and to research. I've discovered that my muscle memory doesn't allow me to get past words with a complex combination of alveolar consonants and tip-teeth consonants. A word I can't say is "benevolent", I've tried multiple times, even during a class presentation just to test but alas. Read a thesaurus, learn synonyms to words you struggle with. Practice speaking on the phone. **Change your attitude**. There is one lingering issue that I still need to overcome though. I hate interacting with other stutterers, especially if theirs is worse than mine. I hate thinking about the stress, the fear, the pain that they go through on a day to day basis. I hate watching Rick and Morty with my friends, even though the show is hilarious, hearing a stutter used satirically is absolutely triggering and becomes all I think about. Good luck to everyone who suffers from this, and to those who have other, worse disorders that makes life difficult. I feel for you, and I wish only the best to each and every one of you.