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Seeking help (my story) It’s going to be a long read, and English is not my native language so excuse me if I make some mistakes. (25 years old male) I’ve stuttered for a while when I was a kid, but then it disappeared. At school I had no problems with stuttering, and I had good grades, taking places in Olympiads (contests for math, chess, languages… etc.) and everything. There was even a “contest” for reading fast and I was pretty good at it. Until about the 7th or 8th grade (let’s define my school starting from 1st till 12th grade, then going to university), everything was fine, I loved school, was like a pretty popular guy… etc. Except I always ran into troubles, because of my “arrogant” (not sure if it’s the right word here) attitude. I was very cheeky with teachers, making jokes during the class, maybe laughing with other children… etc. Basically nothing over the line in most cases, usual childish attitude. But because of that, I often had bad “behaviour marks” and my parents were also sometimes called to school because of that. So in the 8th grade, after my dad came to school once in a morning because I made a bad joke to the woman who washes the floors in the school (I don’t know the right word for it), he was so sick of my bad behaviour I guess, that before leaving to work and me for classes, he slapped me (on the cheek). I remember that slap was very strong and unexpected for me. It caught me off guard. And he did it with much… despise I’d say. Luckily if was during classes so nobody was in the hallways and nobody saw it, except 1 teacher, that stepped in to take me away and she told my dad that what he did is not right at all. I went to my class, terrified, and with my face half red from the slap. It was a language class. The teacher didn’t really like me (because I was too cheeky) so she asked me to read something from the book. And that is the first time I remember stuttering in my adult life. For me, in my mind, that’s the root of my stuttering. I started reading, stuttered and at the end she made a joke referencing my stuttering and everyone laughed. It wasn’t pleasant, especially since I was still in shock from what happened in the hallway and everything. Since that moment, I developed a fear of reading something out loud to people. I didn’t realize this at the time. But I began stuttering and completely blocking my speech when I had to read something. My heart would beat fast, breathing would intensify, intensive sweating… etc. almost like having a panic attack each time I had to read something in school. This, of course, completely demolished my self-esteem in front of my class. I was a pretty confident person before that, but after stuttering each time I read something, I felt like a joke in front of everyone. So it was a vicious cycle, I stuttered, that crushed my self-esteem and stressed me even more, that made me stutter and stress even more. Around that time, I got a girlfriend that I really didn’t deserve. She actually fell in love with me before I started stuttering, when I was a normal cool boy at school. She was very supportive with me, kind and gentle. She noticed my stuttering and everything, but didn’t know what it was or why was it happening. Even I didn’t know at that time what the f. was going on with me. She knew that it was bothering me very much, but I didn’t want to talk about it, because it was my biggest weakness. I didn’t want to look weak for her. Nevertheless, she was supporting me how she could (holding my hand under the table when I was stuttering during class for example), because she really loved me and I loved her back in return. I loved her more than myself or my family. My parents were often arguing at the time, during evenings, maybe even at night. So I heard them before falling asleep often. I was only thinking about 1 thing. To faster get to finish school, 12th grade, and leave to another country with my girlfriend. To summarize, my last 4 years of school were hell for me. I never wanted to go school, I sometimes skipped classes that certainly would require reading or public talking. If somehow I still got to read something, it was horrible. I even tried to go out to toilet when it would be my turn to read… etc. The only good thing in my life was her, my girlfriend. As I said, I really didn’t deserve her and she felt like a blessing for me. I never talked to anyone about this issue of mine except the psychologist from my school. I tried telling my parents once, but my mom didn’t take it seriously and my dad said that it’s because I play too much videogames instead of going out. I remember I cried that day, because I gathered up a lot of courage to tell mom about my struggle, in order to be “bullied” and not be taken seriously. Usually I just want to pretend that I’m not stuttering, and forget about it, avoiding any situations that would make me expose my stuttering. It was pretty difficult to do that in school, because I had to go to school and do what teachers asked me. I hoped that maybe with age, it will disappear, by the time I get to university, but it didn’t go away. My first year of university was hard, different country, different language, complex subjects (engineering school). Somehow I passed it even though I procrastinate a lot, but during the last days before exams, I can prepare a bit and do ok at exams with some luck. I never really talked during classes, never posed questions like other students and skipped classes where I knew I’d have to read/present something. Not always though, because I couldn’t have a lot of absences and I couldn’t find veridic excuses for all of them. The good thing was that, since I was in a foreign country, speaking not my native language, often I could make people believe that I’m just bad at that language and that’s why I stop talking or stutter, even if that wasn’t the case. It was easy to hide the stuttering and blame it on the language! In the summer break after the first year, my girlfriend left me. It would be a long story to try to explain the reasons, because even I don’t know the exact reasons, but after years of thinking on this subject, I think I can write a TLDR: as stuttering progressed over the years, my self-esteem and confidence levels dropped down a lot, and insecurity levels rose up proportionally. Now this obviously changed me as a person. Now of course I want to be confident and be the best man possible for her, but instead, I was ashamed of myself and angry at myself. This anger also reflected on her slowly, even if it was unintentional. I was very jealous for the smallest things, very possessive and our relationship had a lot of fights towards the end… I’m a lot wiser now than I was back then, and I can see a lot more things that I couldn’t see back then. Basically I just wasn’t the same person that she fell in love with and she couldn’t see her life with me anymore in the future. All our dreams of living together forever happily were shattered. She left me after 6 years of relationship during the summer break and I entered a very dark period of my life after that. I cried, a lot, begged her to reconsider, to come back, threatened her with suicide… etc. I also did stuff that I regretted right after, like calling her names, threaten to expose some pictures of her (I know, pls don’t judge, I was really desperate). I really wasn’t myself during months after the breakup. I felt empty and with a huge scar in my body. I was lifeless, with no intention to live, to do anything. She was my soulmate for all those 6 years. We were together every day at school, same class, same desk, eating together… everything. As I said, I loved her more than myself or anyone else. I loved her like a sister, girlfriend, wife, all types of love. I just don’t know how to explain how important she was to me in a structured manner right now since this post is not about that entirely and it’s already too long. The worst part was that she didn’t directly tell me why she left me, so I was left hanging with my thoughts for years after, thinking every day why. That really did feel like anguish and brain torture. I blamed her in the beginning, but after some time I started blaming myself, and hating myself even more. She tried to make me a better person and she did, but stuttering made me worse, without me even realizing. I lost many friends after the breakup, because most of our common friends sided with her, and left me since in their eyes I was a monster and I didn’t have other friends since she was the only friend I needed and I spent 95% of my time with her. I really felt lonely and empty. 2nd year of university, I’m lifeless, in depression, no will to live or to study. Skipping classes when I can to not stutter, stuttering in those that I cannot skip. It was painful, but not as painful as the pain I had in my chest after breaking up. I didn’t pass my 2nd year, but since my grades weren’t that bad, I was allowed to repeat it. 3rd year of university, I’m repeating the 2nd year and living alone, in a small dorm chamber. Every morning I woke up with suicidal thoughts. The only thing that stopped me were the thought about the suffering I would cause to all my family if they found me dead. They have a lot of trust in me and think of me as an example for my younger cousins. When in reality I was becoming more and more insecure to the point I was afraid to go out and seeing people, or just buy bread. I was living, but just surviving each day, to not die, and to not make my family suffer. I failed the 3rd year but it was easily passable if my mental health was not completely in the gutters. In the end, I sent a mail to my university explaining them my stuttering problem and trying to make them understand that that’s the reason I failed, but their reply was that it’s too late for that… Year after, wasn’t enrolled in any university, since I found out that I didn’t pass kinda late and I didn’t apply for anything else in time. I mostly sit at home and played video games with minimal expenses, I was able to live and not starve since I had some money saved. My parents didn’t know about anything, they think I’m still in uni, doing the 4th year. I just couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t look like a failure, which I consider myself. I still visited them during the holidays, trying to act normal. I was feeling pretty useless for not doing anything, but at least I didn’t have to think about stuttering for a long time that year. Year after, I started another uni again (directly in the 2nd year), because something has to be done, right? I was pretty easy for me since I already did years of uni before and the hard part was, as always, avoiding reading or making presentations. As covid started, I had the luxury of doing the classes online (just as everyone else) and this was perfect for my social anxiety. Except that at the end of the year I had to find an internship for a few weeks to validate my year. I was very scared of doing interviews and I didn’t do any so I didn’t find any internship. Luckily, I blamed it on covid (because many people actually had troubles finding jobs/internships during that time) and the university allowed me to do the internship for them. The problem was that at the end I had to make a presentation of what I did. Somehow I managed to do it, online. I was a bit more confident of myself since I had all my notes on a 2nd screen and I could peek at them as much as I wanted. And the jury was very indulgent. I passed my year and was very happy about it. I also managed to find an “internship” to work and study at the same time for the 3rd year of uni. The internship is not great, but I was just happy that I didn’t stutter a lot during the interview so they didn’t notice much that I have difficulties talking. Again, they saw that I’m a foreigner and blamed it on the language… I skipped already 2 presentations during the year at the university, lying that I forgot about them, or since it’s covid, I thought they are online, but I knew they weren’t… etc. Basically I have to lie a lot to hide my stuttering and that makes me feel bad. I have to change words mid-talk when I know I’ll stutter on a syllable. I stutter even in my dreams, or in my thoughts and this terrifies me. It’s a sign that the problem is very deep and I’m never going to recover. I managed doing some presentations online by recording my voice beforehand and playing it like an audio file when it was my turn on talk. As bad as this might sound, this covid situation helped me a lot… To finish off my year, I’ll have to do 2 presentations for 20 minutes each, one now, and one in 3 months, explaining what I’ve done at work and such. This is completely not possible for me to do. I am so stressed and I already lied about having covid so I can delay my first presentation which had to happen 2 weeks ago, and it was rescheduled for 23th of June. I have 1 week to try to do something. Yesterday I wrote an email to my communication teacher, asking her for advice and help, explaining her the situation a bit. And today I decided to write this on reddit since I wanted to do this a long time ago, to ask you what should I do? How do you live with stuttering? I don’t have suicidal thoughts as before, but it’s still hard to live each day in fear of stuttering. The only thing I want in life is to be able to speak like other people, like every other normal people. I feel like so many doors would open in front of me. Thanks for reading