Hm, you write "*are* affected by it", and truth be told, due to the fact that I'm fortunate enough to be around nice people, it doesn't affect me much these days. Everyone is patient and understanding, and we are able to see something amusing in it too. - So I guess I'm not terribly affected by it. It's still there, of course, but my surroundings make it easier to deal with. My instances have gone down, too. - However, back in the day, I was absolutely affected by it. That's because I was a kid around kids in the beginning, and later on, I didn't know yet that there could be nice people around. So yeah, that definitely affected me. Stutter was fraught with frustration, anger and sadness. There was a fear there, of speaking in general, and there was a lot of evading and dodging. Makes it harder to communicate effictively. - Now, I'm not saying that mindset is the only factor, because that's simply not true (and presenting it as such is actually quite misleading). But for me, at least, mindset has been a huge deal of my improvement over the years - and mindset is tied in with who I'm around. - I'm soon to be 42 years old, and because I'm in such a good social place now, stutter almost isn't a hindrance anymore. It's a thing that's there but it no longer drags me down like it used to do.