Hmm. Yeah its really tricky to deal with. The key is to simply stop letting it hold you back as you said....but its hard to apply that in practice. I remember when I was 15, one of my childhood friends was once talking to me (I talk to him every day) and we suddenly started talking about stuttering. He then said to me '' You haven't stuttered in years ''. That's how oblivious I was of my speech. He used to hear me stutter for years, and then he said that I stopped doing it somewhere around the age of 15. Then it came back after I was 17 :(