I joined just to talk about how much observing this subreddit has helped me for the past few months and especially this week.

I joined just to talk about how much observing this subreddit has helped me for the past few months and especially this week. (Sorry for shit format, I’ve never posted before. Also, it’s long because I’m happier than I’ve ever been.) I’ve been stuttering since age 7, I’m 17 now and my stutter is thankfully not as bad as some other people’s that I’ve read about here. However it was always a cause for my social anxiety and contributed to the depression I was diagnosed with around 13. But reading all the tips you guys have given and watching all the videos you guys have linked have helped me feel more confident in my own abilities. Today I did something for the very first time that I’m more proud of than anything else I’ve ever done. I was open and honest about my stutter while introducing myself in one of my language classes. I mentioned that it made communicating harder for me and I was as transparent about it as possible. Today I felt a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders as my classmates told me it wasn’t something that they particularly noticed or payed attention to. I engaged more and talked to people today, using strategies and techniques I learned here to make things easier for my speech, talking to them about my hobbies and my reptiles and my plans for college. My acquaintances all wanted to see pictures of my lizards and I recommended supplies and care options to a girl who wanted to have a leopard gecko of her own. Last Friday i got my hair done and talked with a really friendly stylist, and we spent the appointment conversing about our experiences with reptiles and my plans for college and my career path. I stuttered TWICE in that whole 30 minute conversation. TWICE. I stutter a few words every sentence on a bad day. Even on good days I rarely spoke totally fluent sentences. During that conversation 95% of my sentences were fluent. And at the end she said that it was nice talking with me. I always thought of myself as a severe introvert that had no future. Thanks to this subreddit and to the events of not just today but the past week, I realized that isn’t true. I realized today that people have positive reception to me and think of me as an interesting, fun person to spend time around. All this time I’ve been my worst enemy. All this time I’ve been the only one in my entire life that thought of myself as incompetent and useless because of my stutter. Thank you guys. I couldn’t have done any of the things I’ve done this week without this subreddit.