It's not necessarily caring less for me. I still care, but started to shift my mentality towards it into thinking what do i care about ***more***? Do i care about the teasing, the facial expressions, the pity, being treated like as if i'm slow/stupid ***when i do choose to speak MORE*** than the negative impacts of ***choosing not to speak*** i.e. building up more anxiety internally, forgetting how to socialize, being more afraid to talk to women, letting it limit my job choices, significantly limiting my friends group, and living a life in fear? Overall, yeah, i care about the latter way more when i realized how detrimental ***my own choices of when i speak*** have impacted my life way more than any of that. And that's the key difference. The stutter decides ***how i*** speak. It doesn't decide when i speak, what i say, or anything else really. All that is down to me and whether or not i'm willing to put in the effort to say a word i know will take me 10 seconds to say or not. And my god is it exhausting going through that every time up until now, but every word is one step closer to making progress. But for something practical, dating helped me quite a bit. Started going on dates about last year just to push myself into more 1 on 1 interactions, as group settings always freaked me out and has been helpful in building comfort in those settings.