I'll give some personal experience that's helped me a lot, in hopes you find some of the tips useful. I also stutter, am 22 years old, and I primarily block. I experience some prolongations on initial /s/ words (e.g. snow, steak, etc) too. I've been in the same position and had the same feelings about stuttering as you do for the majority of my life. I would try to avoid stuttering as much as possible, and was very insecure about what others thought of me. The turning point for me was deciding to major in communication sciences & disorders, eventually I want to be a speech-language pathologist. After taking some classes in the major and after some self-development/identification in the area of stuttering and who I am as a person, I've gone through a lot of changes as far as how I feel about stuttering and changing things I do and don't do because of my stutter (if that makes sense). I'll try to give you some advice after all I've learned about myself over the last couple of years. The first thing I'll say is you have to stop being afraid to stutter. And you have to stop escaping situations where you will be embarrassed to stutter in front of others or over the phone. This was the first step to becoming more comfortable with myself as a person who stutters, and it wasn't easy, it's a gradual process. There's a term for the anxiety brought on by a suspected stutter called anticipatory struggle. You know you'll stutter, you dwell on it, and it only makes the situation worse. Really try to put some effort into becoming comfortable with your stuttering in front of others, and when you encounter a stutter, immediately stop thinking about the sound you're stuttering on and focus mentally on the next sound in the word. This has helped me a great deal, or at least I feel like it does. Also, really try to stop worrying about what others think of you. Dwelling on this kind of thing would always make me depressed and wonder why I had to be born with a stutter, why I developed such an unfortunate disability. But that's just the thing-- stop considering it a disability, and focus on the person you are "inside" rather than how you might appear to others sometimes when you stutter. One of my favorite quotes is "stuttering is not in the speaker's mouth, but in the listener's ear" -- in other words, the issue is not with you but with people who are too impatient to listen to what you have to say, or anyone who has a problem with your stutter. Forget about those people. Stay close to the ones who accept you for who you are and don't judge you by how you speak. And talk to them about it. Talking about my stutter is a great stress reliever for me, and posting about it on Reddit just as I am now is included in that. So tell people you stutter. I find more often than not that people are very understanding and compassionate about it. I often try to make light of it or discuss it in a humorous way, and subsequently people are no longer awkward about it when I talk to them. And it feels great. It feels really good to tell someone you stutter. I never discussed my stutter with anyone but my parents until a couple years ago when I had the opportunity to speak about stuttering on a panel with other people who stutter as well as some speech clinicians. At first I turned down the opportunity but then I thought about it and said, you know what, this is my chance to stop running away from it. So I got up there and talked for 15 minutes about my stuttering. People were genuinely interested in what I had to say and asked a lot of questions afterwards, and it was really cool. I felt so great I called my parents and told them about my experience. It'll be hard to do, but you'll be glad you did, and it'll be much easier talking about your stutter with each time you do. Next, start forcing yourself to do the things you're afraid to do because of your stutter. I was always terrified to answer the phone, order at a restaurant, and most of all, give a speech for class. Then one day, I was offered a job at a technology help desk where I'd be answering phones a lot of the time, and working with lots of people who had never heard me speak before. It was really stressful at first but at this point I am no longer afraid to talk to new people or pick up a ringing phone. You get used to it, and it no longer becomes a problem. And when I have to give a speech or talk in front of a class, I start by telling them I stutter and that I'm comfortable with it, and to please judge my presentation based on content and not performance. This kind of thing was a huge step forward for me. Trust me, people won't be mean about it, and they won't think you're mentally or intellectually impaired. One last thing. Over the last couple years I've also been trying to piece together things that have made my stutter worse or better throughout my life. Tried to identify possible causes or contributing factors. I've realized that growing up as a kid, my father had anger management issues and made things a lot more stressful for me. I won't get into the details of it as it's not really important. However, he's improved a lot since then and has apologized and expressed that he's worried that his attitudes around me as a kid may have made my stutter worse or caused it. I told him I don't blame him, as there's no proof of this, and dwelling on it won't help anything. So if you have any factors like that, try to clear them from your life, try to improve your situation gradually by figuring out possible contributing factors and ridding them from your daily life. That's about all the advice I can give you. Sorry for ranting in such an unorganized way, but I think the things that have helped me really could help anyone. Through all this I've come to identify myself as someone who is just as capable as everyone else in any area of life, even with my stutter. My stutter is just part of who I am now, and it doesn't define me or affect the choices I make, ever. I stopped allowing it to. So those are the things that have helped me. Hope they help you, too. Have a great day.