It depends what you mean by “overcome”. I always seem to go through prolonged phases of improvement and degradation. Overall, I am in a much better position now than anybody could have imagined. I find it difficult to even imagine that I was the same person but, in a contradictory way, I am always mentally tormented by the exact same feelings. I just have to steel myself and push through them. As a child, my speech was poor. I would seldom say more than single basic words because I stuttered and would become overcome by anxiety whenever people spoke to me. My blocks were so long that it was generally assumed that I wasn’t bothering to say anything. Over the years, I practiced speaking in private. I became proficient at speaking alone or with only my tutor. I couldn’t transfer this practice into being in front of other people because I had a mental block, an inevitable feeling that I would fail. It was a self-sustaining cycle that was only worsened by everybody believing that I was incapable of speaking or else intolerable to listen to so I wasn’t ever in situations that would have necessitated speaking to others. By the age of 11, I had been practicing for many years in private and found myself in a new situation. I still rarely spoke but, when I did, I often felt that I could express myself much more freely, even if I was still stuttering somewhat. At the age of 12, I was encouraged by my private conversations with my tutor to take a more bold approach to my speaking. If I was capable in private, so long as I had a good plan of what I was saying, then why not in public? I entered the debating club of my school. I was actually surprisingly proficient at public speaking because I had so much more practice than anybody else. It was quite fun. I just couldn’t handle any small talk and really struggled with any questions that threw me off. This increased my confidence and I slowly tried to convert my wins at public speaking into making advances in casual conversation. By the age of 15, I still stuttered but I could often be perfectly coherent in situations where I felt no stress and anticipated the general tide of the conversation. Most casual conversations can be easily predicted and driven in a direction that doesn’t cause any roadblocks. You realise you are essentially saying the same things repeatedly and it is no different from reading aloud. By the age of 17, I had become much more sick in other regards and my speaking also worsened. It was very difficult to be understood. I would not only stutter but get very bad blocks. I would injure muscles in my upper body from being so pained by speaking. I became incredibly isolated and would not speak with most people. I felt all the more upset because I knew that I had previously been capable and now I was incapable again. By the age of 20, my health had improved and I yet again turned my full attention to my speech. I repeated my previous cycle and exposed myself to others. I made many gains and became almost entirely indistinguishable from others when I spoke. If I was not stressed or taken aback by the turn of the conversation, the only perceived difference was that I spoke very deliberately and slowly. Nowadays, I go through phases of being incapacitated by stress or anger and I have to withdraw myself because I don’t want to stutter in front of other people. Other than this, most people would have absolutely no idea that I stutter. I think the biggest problem for me is that it’s a constant mental weight that makes every part of my mind constantly run against the fear that I’m going to look like an idiot. I can’t just speak, it’s a very deliberate process. I’m considered to be very eloquent but I never feel as if I can truly express myself, it’s just a constant process of circumventing any words I know will be impossible for me. I would say that there is no way to be rid of stuttering, it’s more like a stone that you have to bury in the deepest part of your body and carry the weight around in the depths forever. Nobody else can see it but you can’t cast it off. I spend 1 hour a day reading aloud to myself. 30 minutes when I wake up, before the sun has risen; 30 minutes before I will sleep, long after the sun has set. I dread being caught. There are a few books that have an inconspicuous place on my desk and I can recite them from memory because I use them to practice speaking daily. I have done this since I was 7 years old. For the most part, it has been the same few for many years. No normal person does this but it is still worthwhile because the alternative is intolerable for me. Most people here who have “overcome” their stutter probably have a similar type of secret burden. This might sound somewhat disheartening but actually the opposite is true! If even somebody such as myself can temper themselves and speak in public then I think anybody can make gains and reduce the visible severity of the condition.