I'm 29 years old, I was stuttering horribly throughout my teens and early 20s, I still stutter on so many sounds and words till this very day, especially speaking in my mother language, Arabic, but I'm more fluent in English and other languages, for some reason, but it doesn't bother me as much, I know the feeling you described in the post, very well, I grew well too accustomed of people watching me confused waiting for the next word. I guess the thing that I struggled with the most is accepting that I'm a stutterer, it's genetic, and it'll never go away, and keeping on living fully knowing I'll stutter in any situation. I was just watching a movie about a guy who got tourettes, and when it started happening to him, like me, he also didn't understand why he was doing it, and his mom kept telling me that it's not true and it'll go away soon, my parents kept always saying that to me, and that contibuted to the problem, I found out later in life that my father is the most stuttering guy in my life but his entire life he was always hiding it by picking up words he could say fluently and elongating some sounds to sound smoother. I never accepted that I was a stutterer, and people made it worse, I felt so desperate, so frustrated, and so embarassed every time I opened my mouth and people were patiently waiting for what I had to say next. The assholes made fun of me, and the better ones looked... confused. What helped me go through it is that I recognized at some point in my life, everyone stutters to different degrees. Many people mumbe, many people misprounounce a lot of words and misplace a lot of letters, many people straight up just get stuck in the same syllable over and over again, and when I actually hear someone speaking so flawlessly, it's always mesmerising and kind of impressive, but please recognize this to: everyone stuters to a certain extent. My mom at some point told me she'd stutter any day of the week if she could also speak French and English (what I can speak). The spotlight effect with us is real, we feel like we're always teh center of the universe and that people actually care, but just like my mom thought, stuttering isn't even that big of a deal, everyone does it, I know people look visibly confused/concerned, but deep inside, they really don't care as much as you think you do, seriously. The way you should think about your stutter is that it's a part of yourself. Stop hiding away from it, stop shying away from it, stop being embarassed about it, when you stutter, simply apologize and tell people that you have a stutter when you're nervous, and keep on going with the conversation. I do this all the time. Whenever it comes up in these fucking words that start with "n" followed by consonants like "Ntherlands or Nairobi" or words that start with "T" like "Tessa" (a colleague of mine is called "Tessa", and I jokingly told her that I hate her that her that that's her name, and I'll never be able to pronounce that fluently :D). During group calls, I always get stuck while giving her the floor, "Thank you all for your attention, back to T-, T-, Te-.... Te-...ssa", and people just look confused and I don't care. To truly reach this state of mind of "not caring", you need to accept very deep inside that you'll always stutter no matter what and you should live with it and accept it, only then it will actually get reduced and it won't affect your life as much.