What was your experience with speech therapy?

What was your experience with speech therapy? This will be kinda long, so feel free to scroll down to the end if you wanna get right to the point. I've stuttered and had other forms of disfluency since I first started talking. When I was a young kid it was very frustrating for me because I had a lot to say and couldn't get it out like I wanted to. I stuttered or blocked up almost every sentence, often multiple times. Fortunately my parents saw this and got me evaluated. Once it was clear that this wasn't something I would grow out of, I started speech therapy. From the age of 3 to 18 I was in speech therapy off and on. I had an iep that involved in school speech therapy, and also saw a private SLP for a few years. Most of it was very positive. The private SLP was extremely nice and understanding, and really met me where I was at and engaged with me in ways that were effective for my young age. A important part of this treatment was the attitude. I always felt like they were not trying to "fix me" or "make me normal"; they just wanted to help me reach my goals in communicating effectively. They helped me understand that I could mitigate my speech disorder a lot, but there would always be times that I would stutter, and that was okay. Stuttering was not a failure, and the only reason they were teaching me to work through it was because it was frustrating for me. Like any kid I wasn't always completely cooperative, but it went smoothly the majority of the time. Between the age of 3 and around 12 years old, I made the bulk of my progress. I'm about to turn 22. I'm having trouble remembering exactly what age I stopped seeing the private slp but by my highschool years I had stopped seeing her. Anyways, one unfortunate lesson I learned was that not all speech therapists were like this. The speech therapist I worked with in highschool was a different story. She wasn't necessarily bad at what she did, but her communication style and overall approach wasn't effective for me. I was a very angry teenager so that made things more complicated. I felt like she only understood my struggle on a surface level, which is okay, but thought she understood completely. I strongly disliked her. As I mentioned I was a very angry teenager, and we frequently had tense moments. I felt that where I was at was good. I was happy with my fluency but the way she pushed me made me feel like I was inadequate. I know she was just doing her job, but it was frustrating. She exclusively used person first language (which is not a debate to have in this thread) in ways that felt awkward and completely unnecessary. Instead of saying things such as "Bob has a speech disorder", "Bob has a stutter", "Bob stutters", etc she would always say "Bob is a person who stutters". I know the rationale behind this but I don't agree with it and it pissed me off. But that wasn't a huge part of the issue. It got to the point where I refused to cooperate with her, and avoided her completely when I could. I was kinda being a little shit, but it was also super frustrating to have sessions with her. I tried to get speech therapy removed from my IEP during one of my IEP meetings but they said they wouldn't take it off because I needed it. This made me very angry, and I snapped at the person who said this. I felt like I should be the one who decided what needed to be done about an issue that most affected me, and at that point speech therapy was only happening to make others more comfortable. Anyways, my overall experience has inspired me to want to become an slp. My private speech therapist was so important to me and helped me become the empathetic, understanding person I feel I am today. I'm still doing my research and haven't made a decision yet, but I will most likely start working on a bachelor's in Communication Sciences and Disorders sometime this year. My goal is to help people the way I was helped, and overall pay it forward. Making good money doesn't sound bad either lmao. Overall I'm extremely thankful that my parents got me good help and I had the opportunity to access these resources. But my experience is not universal and I want to learn more. So my prompt for discussion is this: what has your experience with speech therapy been like? How did it help you or not help you? What was effective and what didn't work? And honestly if you wanna do what I did and just tell your story I encourage you to do that as well. People who haven't done speech therapy are also encouraged to contribute to the thread! Your perspective is just as important. Cheers!