Hi, I’m in grad school studying to become a speech-language pathologist. I still have a year left to go, so take everything I’m about to say with a grain of salt. Short and sweet answer is yes, 100%, this is terribly detrimental not only to your mental health, but specifically to your goal of becoming more fluent. A great deal of time spent in my graduate level fluency course was actually dedicated towards discussing negative parental influence on children who stutter (including grown children). Many people are genetically predisposed towards stuttering, but only a percentage of those people will be “triggered” to develop a persistent stutter due to environmental factors, among other things. We see this because it’s just really, really, incredibly common for all kids to go through stuttering “phases”, for lack of a better term. A lot of the fluency programs out there today for kids are focusing more and more on SLPs providing therapy/counseling to the entire family, not just the kid in question. The Lindcombe Program is one example. I’m sure your mom means well, but if I were you, I’d stop working on this with her. It’s only reinforcing negative feedback loops, namely that any slip up is some big grievous sin that will always be met with hostility and annoyance. A practicing SLP would be fired YESTERDAY if they responded to any instance of disfluency the way you describe your mom’s responses. It’s not just unhelpful, it’s harmful. I’m specifically talking about the speech aspect here, all other things aside. I hate to say it, but any time you sit down to work on this with her, it‘s likely doing worse than nothing. That’s not to say you can’t work on this on your own, or that you need the help of an SLP, because you absolutely don’t. The fact that you’re independently motivated to work on this in your free time is the BEST possible indicator that you could have a lot of success without one. I’ve posted about it in this sub a couple times before, but I’ll link the PDF to [this free book right here](https://www.stutteringhelp.org/Portals/English/book0009_may2010.pdf) again. Each chapter is written by an SLP who stutters themselves and it results in a combination of some really good clinical and personal advice. I think it would be especially useful for you, since you say you wish there were a way you could practice on your own, and this is something of a self-help book. (Kind of an amazing one too, there’s really been nothing quite like it before or since!) The main take aways I got from it: 1) Every single person experiences normal instances of disfluency, so try not to think of yourself as a “stutterer”, and others as “non-stutterers”. 2) Allow yourself to acknowledge even partial successes. A stutter at 50% tension is better than one at 100%, no? A block that lasts only 2 or 3 seconds, instead of your usual 5 or whatever it is, is still great progress, so take credit for it! If you try a fluency method or technique and it doesn’t work flawlessly, but you can tell it helps you to manage it, run with that. 3) THE MOST IMPORTANT IMO: If you really want to “get rid of it” (ie. be as consistently fluent as possible) you will absolutely have to accept and commit to the fact that you will need to make yourself uncomfortable. This means pseudo-stutters around increasingly more high-anxiety situations/people, deciding in the moment that you will not allow avoidance behaviors: every single time the opportunity presents itself, put yourself in that feared social situation anyway, even if it’s the last thing you want to do. Don’t just endure it but welcome it as a challenge to practice your new techniques. You need to experience yourself performing fluency in all kinds of scenarios. And you will, if you just keep practicing in them. But you gotta be there and do it. Repeatedly. Keep #2 very much in mind while you do this. Obviously the book goes more in depth about the specific things you can do on your own. It usually starts with taking an inventory of your stuttering behaviors by recording yourself, then purposefully manipulating those behaviors. I really can’t say enough good things about this book, I’m amazed that it’s just free and out there for the world lol. If you want to keep practicing with others (which is definitely recommended, it’s obviously more than half the battle when it comes to stuttering), my best advice is find a wide range of (supportive!!!) communication partners in a wide range of social contexts. Easier said than done, I know. Hell, maybe you could even read that book out loud to your mom eventually so she can glean a little bit of empathy into your situation ;) I wouldn’t start with that though, for previously mentioned reasons lol. Finally, if you live near any universities and you’re willing to go to speech therapy, look and see if any of them have a Communication Sciences & Disorders graduate program (might go by a different name in the UK). A lot of their clinics are free to the community so students there can get clinical experience, and it’s always supervised by faculty in the department (many of whom have doctorates in the field). IME university clinics are always delighted to have a person who stutters come in, so much so they sometimes bump you up on any waitlist that might exist. My clinic (like most) is offering teletherapy right now to compensate for COVID. Good luck! Remember that no one has flawless speech all of the time. The fact that you’re 1) motivated and 2) able to be decently fluent in even just one particular scenario, is great news and bodes very well towards making more progress.