Hi Pansyhunter. Your story resonates well with me. I used to be a very talented covert stutterer in high school (I was the king of word substitution). But in college, I have had to regularly introduce myself and this overwhelmed me. And for the first time in my life, I have never felt so helpless because you can't word substitute your name and this just put my stuttering in the open and I was no longer able to continue my life as a covert stutterer. During my final year of college, one of my professors who was himself a person who stutters recommended speech therapy for me and he felt very strongly about this and even offered to pay for all these sessions because at that time I did not have the means to pay for it. I learned many different techniques, including easy onset, cancellation with easy onset, voluntary stuttering, etc. Out of all these techniques, voluntary stuttering made a huge impact on me where I felt more in control of my stuttering while stuttering. These speech therapy sessions through working with my therapist, helped me to better cope with my stuttering by helping me accept my condition. However, I don't actively use any techniques that I learned from therapy right now. I was also told to disclose my stuttering ("hi, by the way I'm a person who stutters....") to others before talking because this alleviates some of the tension of "trying not to stutter". This is a great technique to reducing your stutter, but I began sounding like a broken record employing this technique. For example, I talked with a person (X) yesterday but there is a new person (Y) next to X and I start off with "Hi, by the way, I'm a person who stutters...". X already knows that I stutter and X and Y don't care if I stutter. Most people don't care if you stutter and I certainly don't care if I stutter and constantly having to disclose this became more of a burden than of therapeutic value. Once you develop this sense of apathy toward your stuttering, I would suggest you do the same in no longer disclosing (because the purpose of disclosing is to help you to remove this sense of the need to perform by having perfect fluent speech). By disclosing, the feeling that fluent speech must be achieved by any means necessary, drastically reduces. I've learned to be content with my speech and also be unapologetic. If it takes me 10 minutes, or even 10 hours to say something, you better wait for it. I speak on the phone regularly too :-). Sure, I wish I could be better at speaking, and I stutter daily and there are both great days and not so great days in terms of my ability to talk, but I have come to realize that my happiness is not dependent on my ability to speak fluently. I think you should continue working with your therapist, but I also wanted to offer you some of my perspectives and wanted to encourage you on this journey as a person who stutters. I recall some of those feelings and thoughts that you are currently experiencing.