So you basically go mute when you feel like it'd be hard to speak, I sometimes wish that I could do that, I can see how it'd be easier in a foreign country. But this isn't a long term solution, when you've spent ten years in that country and still don't seem to properly speak the language people are going to question the situation, it might create another type of awkwardness and your stutter is still there, you're just avoiding it and going covert, will you have to move/change social groups everytime acting like you don't know gets too strange? I understand that it's your way to cope with your situation but people have the right to feel like their lives are shit, even if you try to convince them that it's not most would still think that it is because of their particular life experiences, they might only change their mindset through new positive experiences. If a person has had predominantly negative experiences like bullying, being rejected and fired from jobs because of their stutter and living below their means then you come and tell them that their stutter isn't the cause of their suffering and that it's actually easy to make it right, just forget it, nobody minds it, only you do, they will understandably take it badly. When something is clearly linked to bad experiences, denying the suffering is more like gaslighting than encouraging. Some of the worst advices I've received came from other stutters, they had it slightly or mildly and were clearly the most uncomfortable when I was trying to speak, the advices that they gave were almost the same as everyone else's with the same sense of supreme knowledge but with an added feeling of, "You having such a severe stutter while I don't can only mean that You're doing something wrong", so the blame is on the struggling one again, almost never was I met with sympathy or a recognition of the particular hardships that it creates. While fellow strutterers are supposed to know more about such a life, they seemed to be purposefully oblivious and dismissive, even avoiding me more than non stutterers, especially when they have it more mildly and are older. Be confident, accept it, breath more slowly, socialize, we all know that, yet stuttering doesn't always follow the rules, sometimes I've been the most fluent after I barely socialized for months, I've been fluent while I was extremely stressed, then other times in similar situations or totally neutral ones my stutter has been terrible. Mine has gotten worse with age, some people almost fully recover in adulthood while I've seen middle aged people with mid to severe stutters, they go to work everyday, have to speak everyday yet the practice and years of emotional control barely did anything for them. So with all of these individual particularities of stuttering and the challenges that it creates for us at different levels of severity, different periods of life, and in different situations, being overly positive about it and advising people to just ignore everything bad and go live good lives just leaves a bad taste, a deep sense of never being able to be understood, which hits harder since it's an already socially isolating issue. I've never seen a condition with such a high level of suicidal ideation and reduced conditions of life being treated in such a way, both by sufferers and outsiders, but again, maybe we have so many difficulties getting support and accomodations (even if it's only being able to rightfully write something on a notebook instead of speaking mid conversation) exactly because our own community is so hell-bent on acting like everything is fine and tucking away everything that's even remotely negative in some fantasy of normalcy. In my opinion this coping strategy is the reason why stutterers will keep on suffering in utter silence and disregard for more decades. Even if some are socially successful despite it, it doesn't negate the fact that more are having worse lives than they should. We should get our strength from advocating for ourselves, not by trying to gaslight ourselves and everyone around us. (Sorry I wrote a lot and it's not only directed at you, I'm just venting)