Hey there. Just wanted to say you aren’t alone, I know exactly how you feel. Back in the day I was also the one always volunteering for roles where I’d have to publicly speak, gave guest lectures as a grad student, and stuttered the whole way through but didn’t give a fuck. At the time, I knew people valued me for the content of what I had to say/offer, and didn’t care how I spoke. These days, my world has shrunk so much that I avoid speaking at all costs, and have sunk into a massive regression. I think for a lot of people, the pandemic has really shrunk their worlds. I think that’s doubly hard on us stutterers, in some cases. I know that I feel a lot more at ease stuttering around people vs over a Zoom call. I’m not sure why, but I do think that the socialization aspect of human nature has something to do with it. I recently started speech therapy, and during my first appointment, one of the first questions my speech therapist asked is whether or not I was struggling to speak over Zoom/video calls, and she told me that this is a trend among stutterers. I also want to give a HUGE preface here that I am 100% committed to wearing masks outside, that I think it’s the right thing to do both for safety and as a basic sign of respect for others. That said, idk about you, but wearing a mask makes speaking even harder because it tends to restrict my breath whenever I’m tripping on a block, or something like that. I’m going to wear a mask until we’re told it’s safe to not wear them anymore, but I feel like it’s worth at least acknowledging that wearing a mask as a stutterer poses a unique set of problems. Especially because it makes me more and more aware of my speech in public settings, and harder to ignore/brush off stuttering moments. I guess the tl;dr here is that the pandemic has been rough for a lot of people, but I think that it’s effected us stutterers in really unique ways that others don’t fully understand, unfortunately. My hope is that when things return to normal, we’ll be able to begin the process of returning to normal ourselves. Hang in there OP.