positives: - I know who makes an effort to come into my life/the relationship I make with them because, let’s be real, my stutter is fairly severe and it can be hard to get comfortable with when you first meet me - it kinda filters out a lot of shitty people I don’t want anything to do with? - it’s a great way for me to end conversations I don’t want to be a part of (aka sorry, bad fluency day!) - it’s a GREAT way to protect yourself against that one person who everyone seems to love but has a problem with you for whatever reason (I had a toxic higher up decide to try to get me written up because she had a problem with me 3 days after i got there bc of ‘not conforming to her idea of workplace dynamics’ and I had to pull the “is this because of how I speak?” card to get her and management to back TF off) - as crude as it may sound (humor’s how I learned to cope with it), I know deep down that it will likely make me (23F, tall, thin, obviously femme-appearing) less of a target if I’m walking alone at night negative: - people are always weirdly impressed whenever I do really smart stuff (maybe this is a pro for some but for me I tend to be a bit confused by this sometimes) - the habits my stutter led to me to develop over my life tend to entangle a lot with my neurodivergency so there’s times where I’ll need to ask myself, “is this habit because of the ADHD or compensating the stutter or just how I’ve been conditioned to act?” IMO, this really makes it hard to identify where I can start taking steps to grow because ADHD brain habits are likely not going anywhere but social conditioning has a more clear path to start taking. - being seen as an intense person with a big personality, it can scare a lot of people because there’s this glaring disability staring other people in the face but I don’t make it a point to address it unless other people want to ask me a respectful question - it really makes it hard to dig myself out of a bad headspace, because if I’m feeling good I know I can go out and socialize/take any L’s in stride, but if I’m in a bad headspace my stutter acts as like an extra obstacle (“oh I don’t wanna go out because it’s gonna be harder to talk and I don’t want to have to explain to people or face microaggressions today, etc.) - more of a theory, but I’ve noticed that my fluency is tied to my mental health, so I think that when I fall into a depressive mood for a long time, it worsens my stutter and creates a vicious cycle that can keep perpetuating itself Hope this helps, and good luck!! I hope I can read it someday :)) *P.S. one other thing I forgot to mention is that having a stutter can set you up for some VERY funny moments. I was working on a biochemistry thing in college with two other people, there was a moment where I tried to say “sexy“ as a quick response to a belch from one of them. What came out was “sex-?”, and it sounded like a question because of how my voice tone changed on the block 😂 Immediately my face was bright red (the person who belched was a guy) and he just answered with “is that a question or a invitation”