This is a repost of what I said on a different post but I really want you to hear it: I spent so long being scared of my voice (stuttering and lots of frozen words makes conversation extremely difficult) but now that I’m in college, I have learned to focus on my brain and not my voice. I’m already connecting to a professor about research, on the eboard of a club that means a lot to me, and that is all because I told myself there’s bigger things in life than my stutter. There was this one time I went to office hours with a professor and she told me how much she loved seeing me act as a leader in my lab group and always raising my hand in spite of my stutter and she sees past this and knows that I’m intelligent which made me almost begin to tear up right then and there. Having a stutter is extremely difficult and painful and people do not understand why you’re like this which is incredibly isolating but if you put yourself out there and make it seem like you’re not bothered by it, no matter how stuck your words and face gets and how quiet the room becomes, your courage for powering through those tough times really shines and and says more about you than anything. I am tired of being depressed about my stutter so I’m trying my best to live a positive life and you should too. The longer you dwell on your stutter, the more it eats you alive and that monster doesn’t deserve to take over your life. I let it do so for too long and now I’m standing up to it and I couldn’t be happier. I want you to feel the same way and I wish you the best. ❤️ *** This condition is terribly difficult to live with but you mentioned before you feel like you can't showcase your talents and I believe that is where you need to start. I am really good at science so I'm studying to become a geneticist with the endgoal of learning more about stuttering to be able to understand the genetics and revolutionize speech and gene therapy. I don't know what your talents are but you can't let your stutter hold you back. I spent so many years quiet and now that I'm at college, I refused to be silent. I am in a much happier place than ever before and it is all because I have learned how to cope with my stutter. I don't want to say I've accepted it because it's hard to when there's still so much to learn but I'm definitely seeing things in a much more positive light. I still get those pitiful looks and it makes me want to punch people in the face but a stutter is a rare condition and people can't help being ignorant about it. Not even my own mom is totally empathetic about it. I work retail where I have to ask every customer if they'd like to sign up for a credit card and because of my stutter, that's a bit difficult so I don't say it as often as other employees so a supervisor pulled me to the side one day and asked me to ask her for a credit card so I tried but had to keep on rewording myself which was extremely stressful and another time she asked me if I'm nervous because I stutter more when I'm nervous and that was absolutely infuriating to hear. I was really confused and just said "uh I'm not nervous, I was just born this way" and went back to working but spent the rest of my shift with all of this pent up rage that I didn't get out until ranting to my best friend the next day. People are dumb but us stutterers are not so the more you look in the mirror and remind yourself of how intelligent you are, the more your situation is going to improve. I really hope I was able to help and if you need anything, feel free to message me.