Hi xoebox, I hear what you're going through. I've stuttered since I was 5 years old or so (I'm 34 now). I know exactly what you mean when you describe it as "draining". I think that's an excellent way to put it. Whenever I block or repeat my chest and abdomen tighten and it feels like they will explode. Does that happen to you too? And I know that the last thing you want to hear is to "not care" about it, or "ignore" it. It annoyed me too when people told me that. I remember trying to do simple things like make phone calls or order food and being told "take your time". Really annoying. Here's what happened though - it got better. Not my stutter so much, I still stutter frequently and always will; but people's attitudes got better. I was teased and mocked when I was young (up to grade 8 or so) but not much since then. It took a long time for me to realize but no one really cared much that I stuttered. It wasn't until my mid twenties that I finally realized that stuttering is no more important than the colour of my eyes, or the fact that I like cake. No one else thought it was either. It was then that I realized that I had developed something of a victim mentality around my stuttering. I secretly blamed it for everything that wasn't going well in my life. What ever was wrong - my stutter was to blame. It took several years of work, but I managed to convince myself that stuttering is irrelevant. Something that was powerful for me was the idea of 'objectifying your demons'. If you can objectify your stutter it will no longer have any power over you. It is absolutely true that people will treat you the way you treat yourself and when I began to treat myself better, everyone else did too. I hope this is helpful. It's a long road so pace yourself. Don't try to go all the way at once.