What can i do?

One of the saddest things in the world is knowing what to say, but not being able to say it. This has been my existence since birth. The anxiety; the fear, the attempts, the failures, the embarrassment and the depression are as common to me as breathing is to 'normal' people. The good days and the bad days bring about hope and despair, the self-taught therapy brings about disappointment. Watching the body language of people change when they realize this unassuming young man isn't so unassuming after all, breaks me to my core.
Phone calls feel like a death sentence, I shake uncontrollably and my voice trembles as I speak to the other party. I feel the pity in their voices, the sadness in their tone. I don't want to be pitied, being pitied sucks. This condition makes one feel helpless, and alone. No one truly understands how it feels to see your stock fall in the eyes of others due to something you truly can't control. If you could, you would. There is no one to speak to, there is no counsel to alleviate your pain. People say they understand, that all you have to do is try. What makes them think I haven't? Maybe it's the lack of improvement, maybe this just never gets better. Maybe I will always be damaged, and seen as such. Maybe Job interviews will always give me splitting anxiety that makes me want to $#%^ my pants. Maybe I will always have to work twice as hard to earn the respect I should be given. Maybe my relationships with others remain platonic because no one wants damaged goods. Maybe I'm wrong about all this, but it feels as if this yoke on my shoulders gets heavier as I get older. The stutter isn't cute anymore, the time for outgrowing is far gone and the obstacles only get harder and longer. Failing to overcome these obstacles only prolongs the depression. Sometimes it feels as if you-know-what is the only remedy to this, or isolation. Saving myself from the pain may be easiest thing.
Every word uttered is examined, every mistake or pause or stutter is analyzed internally for days and days. Sometimes the mistakes are so plentiful that I become mute. I'm not upset, I'm ######6 devastated. I want to scream and punch things till my knuckles bleed(but i don't). Funny thing is, mine isn't even bad. I've seen people with worse degrees of it, and I mourn for them. It's not easy to feel like every laugh in your immediate environment is directed at you, or that those you think are your friends maybe your greatest tormentors. I wish I could stay strong. I wish I could say these things don't affect me, but if you get hit enough times, you're going to go down. I'm down right now, which is why I wrote this. I might be down for a long time, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel is dark and callous, and stretches the length of my life. I just hope I become numb to it all, because being sad just gets so tiring.

hi depresseddan,

back when i was working, i knew someone with a stutter. nice guy. didn't change how i treated him one bit. one day, i remember, he phoned me. i sort of recognised the voice but something was missing. then i realised that the stutter had completely gone. so, it can happen.

the little i know about stuttering is a lot of it comes down to breath control, much like singing.

but the thing here is, and i have to blunt about this, there are far worse things to have wrong with you. you're not dying. you haven't lost any limbs or major organs. one day you'll look back on your life and deeply regret all the time that you wasted on such a relatively trivial problem and all the opportunities that you lost because of it too.

back to when i was working again, i knew a couple of guys that were type 1 diabetic. the first blamed all his misfortune on his diabetes. the second i don't even recall how i found out he was diabetic. guess which one got sacked and which one got promoted to management.

and, just for the record, no decent potential partner is going to pass up on you just because you stutter. it'll be you passing up on them.

very best wishes,

shock (the monkey).

I went through the same. I found i stutter when i am deep into the negative (depressed) or positive pole (euphoric). When i am in between in a zen mode i dont stutter. When you get really down the way you see things is proportionally biased in a negative way, memory is selective for that emotional conformation. Also, movement and action are supressed, you get self centered, you focus on problems, and feel like you have a ton of bricks on your shoulder. When you shift to positivity, everything changes and is inverted. Perception depends on where you are in the feeling spectrum. To shift to the feel good pole, you need to pay attention to your body. It has needs.
Your mind also. Everybody needs other people, and all we need comes from them. To properly interact with others you have to surpass a certain point in the spectrum, to have the necessary self esteem to transmit positive signals and pleasurable interaction.

To raise my self esteem i play the guitar, go fishing, attend forums, so that i can charge my batteries for social situations and be able to function to a certain extent. I still stutter sometimes,but its ok, because my source of well being comes from a place that i recognize as proper and adequate to every situation

Sending many hugs, if wanted.

My own stutter holds me back from many things, job positions too, etc. I hate that I stutter when I do. It sucks big time!

I met someone who has a really bad stutter. He doesn't talk much to me and I don't want to put him in a position that he feels that bringing up the fact that I do stutter as well, might make him really uncomfortable and upset. So I stay mum. When he speaks I don't turn away, I face him and let him just be himself. He is a friend of mind and maybe one day when we get to know one another better, we can talk about this. In the meantime, he deals with his demons. As I do mine, with the stutter and the bipolar. Please know that what you wrote consoles me because I have felt like that too.

The most important thing is not letting the anxiety of stuttering rule over your mind. That's what leads to more stuttering and luckily at a young age I was able to stamp it out, I still stutter and it can be annoying and lead to a bit of anxiety when it happens but ultimately I just have to laugh it off and let the person know I have a stutter.

When you're dwelling on it, it's like a vicious cycle. You have to remove the negative connotation of stuttering in your mind and run with it. It's a little bit easier for me though as I don't stutter much at times where I know what I need to say, such as presentations and job interviews.