I just found this subreddit, thought I would introduce myself and tell my story, so to speak.

I just found this subreddit, thought I would introduce myself and tell my story, so to speak. I have been stuttering for as long as I can remember. From elementary school all the way through college and even now, at 21 (almost 22) years old. I have had speech therapy for almost all of those years. In this therapy, they tried to teach me not to get rid of the stutter, but to simply "modify" it, so that it wouldn't be as noticeable as it was. It was fine for what it was, and even quite fun sometimes. The problem was that it didn't really help me much outside of the therapy. Fast forward to the summer of 2015. A year prior to this, I was at a birthday party of my uncle (which I hate, as you probably can imagine). At this party a family friend suggested a special "stutter therapy". He told me about a 10 day course at which you would supposedly completely get rid of your stuttering. At first I was very reluctant about it. I wasn't confident that it would work and that the format, a 10 day course with a group of fellow stutterers, was for me. So after much consideration, hesitation and fear, I finally decided to go ahead with it and visit a demonstration. That is to say, my mother practically force me to go and see what it was all about. So there I was, in a room full of people filled with people who were probably just as scared as I was, listening to the teachers explaining their method and training. Sure enough, I was one of the firsf people they asked to the front of the room so they could demonstrate it on me. And to my surprise it actually worked. I was sold! As soon as I could apply for the next course I would. So that course happened a few months later. It worked amazingly well, it was a lot of fun because most of the other people following the course were around my age and we could really support each other. But then the course ended and it was time to follow through with everything you learned in the real world. The first 2 to 3 months I was so happy and so cofident with my ability to speak fluently that I would rarely shup up, which made me and everybody in my environment happy and proud of me. Needless to say this all felt great. And then it went downhill. You see, I was growing so confident but I was still really critical of myself, as I have always been. I felt like I shouldn't be doing the breathing excercises anymore because "I should know it by know", and every time I slipped up even a little bit with my speech, I took it as a huge failure. So as quickly as I built up my confidence it went away again even quicker, and that made my stutter worsen again. I along with the critisism I had for myself, was afraid what other people might think about me, since I was supposed to be done with stuttering. And then my parents, especially my mother, got very critical of it. She felt like I wasn't taking it seriously anymore, which only helped to lower myself confidence even more. Luckily I have a very understanding girlfriend. She doesn't care about if I stutter or not, and she always makes me feel at ease and that I can truly be myself. When it's just the two of us, I speak much better than when I'm around anyone else. I don't really know how to end this. I apologize for the long post. Enjoy the rest of your day!