The biggest takeaway I got from your post is when you said “no one understands my pain, not even my family”. This hits so close to home, no one in the world understands what we go through. Even ordering drive thru on a bad speech day can be so embarrassing and make you feel like shit. Yes, no one will ever understand that feeling or when you order at a restaurant and the waiter looks at you funny or asks if you are ok. Just know your parents love you and want the best for you but it probably comes off bad. Like you said, they will never understand. I think a good conversation on how you feel when they are “trying to help” would go along way. As a life long stutterer at 38, I’m sure I have felt every emotion you have felt and I have also steered away from things I really wanted to do to not be in a speaking situation as much as the next guy. I’ve done speech therapy for my whole childhood and even drove 15 hours to the Holland Speech Institute in Virginia for 1-2 week intensive training after getting a financial advisor job out of college because it was a shit or get off the pot moment for my career path as far as speech goes. I met a fellow stutterer firefighter/paramedic at the Holland Institute from California. I’ve always wanted to do that as a profession but was worried about speaking to the public and how they would react. After speaking with him for advice I knew it was an actual possibility. The intensive training helped if I wanted to talk real slow and sound like a robot (breathing techniques) but it wasn’t really for me. 15 years later, I have been a firefighter / paramedic for the last 11 years and love my job. Early on there were many many many difficulties but if you put yourself in that situation and come to the realization that you shouldn’t give a fuck what people think about you is when my confidence grew to a point where my speech improved enough to be comfortable in who I was as a person. I will still have bad days but it’s easier to overcome it if you truly don’t give a shit what people think of your stutter. Not sure if this will help at all but just know you aren’t alone and a lot of us feel your pain. Good luck man, it will eventually get better.