I could be wrong surely, but I can’t help but feel like there’s this undertone that if a stutterer managed to use positive thinking to get past their pain and struggles, surely their stutter or bullying or pain cannot have been as bad as that of someone who couldn’t. This is not the case, at least not for me. I could barely speak due to my stutter for all of my childhood, especially in school. I am in my 40s now, and grew up going to an all girl’s Catholic school in a Latin country and make no mistake: I was mocked by students and by teachers alike. Brought to the front of the class to endure the mockery. Teachers would imitate my stuttering, call me the R word. If I cried when mocked it was my fault, never the bullies, because I “should have been able to laugh at myself”. I lost jobs because of my stutter. I didn’t have any friends until I became an adult. And never forget that day on the first week at my first job when a coworker mocked me, and I realized it wasn’t just school: it was forever. Accepting my stuttering was a huge step in taking a positive attitude toward it. I’ll always be a stutterer. But if I kept my old attitude I would have been unhappy forever. No one could have made me change it though. I had to get there by myself. I hope you get a happy ending someday even if you don’t believe so right now. I really wish you the best, I mean that from the bottom of my heart as someone who has been angry, hurt and jaded, and reacted to “positive thinking” type advice in a pretty bad way myself before. I don’t know your struggle, it’s yours and I am not you, even if we both stutter I can’t know it, but I wish you peace. Please don’t give up on it, even if your stutter never changes.