One positive I can take from your suggestions, is the fact I would never have to voluntarily stutter, or make it my mission to do so. It’s a 100% guarantee, so at least that part is 0% effort on my part. I didn’t claim that there are people who lack the ability to be confident. I agree that it exists somewhere deep within all of us. What I said was that there are many people who lack the ability to simply decide to be confident, and to have said confidence manifest itself based purely upon the person having made that decision. My lack of confidence has at least 42 years of roots, which entangle every last part of who I am. Walking into a store and intentionally making a clerk uncomfortable by confidently shoving my disability directly in their face would not help my lack of confidence. That is only going to make me feel like I assaulted the person. My biggest concern has never been for myself in these types of interactions. I have always felt empathy for the person to whom I am speaking. One minute, they’re comfortably handling business with fluent customers, and the next, they are put in an uncomfortable position by some guy, twisting and distorting his face, tapping his leg, jerking his body, and not saying anything. It’s unsettling, to say the least. And they just have to smile, and act like they’re not uncomfortable. Of course it’s okay to stutter… but that doesn’t mean someone with a severe stutter, like myself, doesn’t cause the few strangers with whom I attempt to communicate extremely awkward. I’m sorry, but it bothers me that I make a lot of the people to whom I speak visibly uncomfortable. I set high standards for myself in all areas of my life, but sometimes that seems meaningless when my disability can so easily destroy people’s opinion of me.