Speech therapists/pathologists are there to listen to your speech, and to try and give you the best professional advice on strategy that they can. There are various reasons it can go wrong. 1) The therapist incorrectly decided what the best strategy for you would be. In my opinion, this is the most likely case. There are countless strategies for speech, and perhaps the one that was recommended wasn't the one for you. 2) You were not following the advice of the therapist in the exact way they recommended. This could happen not by you deciding not to use the strategy, but maybe it wasn't clear to you how exactly you were supposed to do it. Only you would know the answer to this one. 3) The right strategy isn't known yet. This can tie in to the first reason. Some stutters formulate in a way where there is very little to remedy it. But that doesn't mean that it's hopeless, it just means you'll have to work a little harder with more professionals (and more personal research) to discover a working strategy for you. Best of luck with the journey - don't lose hope. Don't let anyone tell you to give up and that you're stuck with the stutter forever. Gotta keep trying, you're only 20.