Reading this really helped me, thank you for sharing. My stuttering seems to be pretty much the same as yours. Replacing words with easier to say ones, faking thinking, sometimes when I'm about to start saying something it's like my throat just locks and I need to calm down for a moment to release it. 21 y old male, second year in college. I have skipped classes and many important tasks just because of the anxiety of facing people with my speech. I will definitely try to approach things a bit different now when I read your advices even tho I never really had the strength to open about this even to my closest ones, sharing my most intimate thing, my biggest weakness, like I would give them the power to hurt me. Accepting who I am has always been the hardest thing for me. I started smoking weed because it made me numb for all worries about my speech and I been smoking since 9th grade, but it kinda made me even more depressed and anti-social with the time. When I look at people and see how easy everyone talks and share their thoughts, I cant help but wonder what my life could be if things happened in a different way. Anyway, seeing that there are people fighting what I am fighting really gets me the courage to don't give up and tryna get better. Aa