Lifelong stutterer, haven't really tried to address it for 20 years. I'm thinking about trying again

Lifelong stutterer, haven't really tried to address it for 20 years. I'm thinking about trying again This will be a long post so thanks for bearing with me. I haven't really talked to anyone about this in 20 years (aside from my wife a little) so I have a lot of pent up thoughts and emotions about stuttering. I have lived in the same small Canadian town for my whole life so most of the people I spend the majority of my time around have known me to stutter for 20 plus years and it's just accepted and not ever acknowledged (for the most part). I should pause here and preface this post by saying that my stutter hasn't ever really been that bad compared to a lot of people. I remember other kids at speech therapy who could barely get words out. I've heard all the stories about people standing up to do presentations and standing in silence for minutes because they couldn't get anything out. Mine is more like I have a hard time getting a sentence started, or sometimes I get blocked on a certain sound or a word. I've gotten good at anticipating this and changing words or the sentence structure on the fly before I get caught in a stutter. It also comes and goes. Sometimes I will barely stutter for a month and than it will come back out of nowhere. To be honest, I've never really thought of it as a big deal (at least consciously). I've always considered it more of a minor inconvenience. I started to stutter when I was around 4 or 5. My parents immediately put me in speech therapy and more or less forced me to go for about 5 years until I was 10 or so. I absolutely hated it. I hated people making a big deal about the way I talked and I hated being constantly told that there was something wrong with me. I was forced to go against my wishes for several years. I did try the methods that were taught, like the breathing practice and slow speech. I still remember being hooked up to a computer game that you had to beat with controlled breathing. Anyways, I never found any of this stuff worked in the slightest. I know a lot of people who grew out of their stutters, but i never did. I'm 28 now and I'm convinced that speech therapy and my parents insistence that I get fixed caused some kind of subconscious block and that's why I still have it. Throughout my adolescence, it never really bothered me that much. Yeah, I got made fun of a few times, but I was always a big kid with other big friends and was fortunate enough not to be in a situation where I got bullied. In high school and university, I actually had more girls tell me that my stutter was cute than made fun of me or anything. Like most of you on here reading this, I was always somewhat scared of public speaking, and tried to avoid it in school. i've always been an introvert, and I'm sure my stutter made me more quiet than I would otherwise be. My stutter always got worse when I was the centre of attention. In university there was no way around presentations, and I had to do a lot. I actually got quite confident about presentations and it was a non-issue after a while, even though I would often stutter through them. I now work as an environmental science consultant in a professional setting, and I still stutter. It comes and goes like it always has. It seems to get bad in meetings or on phone calls, which is always a pain in the ass. Now for the meat of why I'm here making this post. over the last few months, I've started to become annoyed at myself for never overcoming this. It's not even like my stutter affects my quality of life that much. I have always had very healthy friend and family relationships, a good career, fun hobbies, and I married the woman of my dreams last year. What bugs me is that I've always been very good at overcoming things. I consciously try to identify my shortcomings and actively work on them, whether it be in my personal life, with athletics and nutrition, with academic and professional knowledge and skills, etc. My stutter is one of the few things that has stumped me for 20-25 years, and I hate failing at things. Everyone I knew as a kid that stuttered as well has gotten past it and I can't figure out why I haven't been able to. I've been reading (and listening to podcasts) a little bit in the last few months about stuttering. I basically pretended I didn't stutter and ignored it since I was 10, so this was a big deal for me. One idea that I've come across that makes sense to me is that traditional speech and Language Pathology that treats stuttering as a medical or genetic condition is flawed. It never worked for me. In-fact, I believe it made it worse by making me more self-conscious about it. I've been interested in the idea that the root of stuttering is psychological and not physical, and can be caused by deep rooted mental blocks or trauma. I heard an analogy that I think is interesting. Say that stuttering can be compared to a person having their hands tied together. The act of performing a sport can be compared to speaking. A coach (or speech therapist) can try coach the player along and find ways to adapt to playing with their hands tied together. They can learn tricks to be able to compete with the other players who have full use of their hands. But traditional speech therapy doesn't address the fact that the hands are tied together. There is something psychological happening. Anyways, I'm no expert by any means but this explanation makes sense to me based on how my stuttering feels to me. I also firmly believe in holistic health so an emotional or psychological root to stuttering jives with this. **The points of this long-winded post are to:** **1) Just to share my personal stuttering story with other stutterers because I haven't really ever talked about this.** **2) Ask if anyone who also is/was a lifelong stutterer has had any luck finally kicking it, especially without traditional speech therapy.** **3) Engage in some general discussion about stuttering and hearing all of your stories as well.** Thanks for reading!