I totally understand what you mean about ex-stutterers who may seem
like they're bragging; even when they're giving advice, the advice
sounds condescending to me.
Thus far, after being on a program and making many contacts
(initially...now, not so much), I've only heard ONE guy truly stutter
(the program didn't help him much, and he very promptly relapsed). For
some reason, though it is hard to understand him sometimes, I still
enjoy talking to him the most, because I feel like everyone else who
calls me is SO fluent that I feel pressured to be fluent.
And on this forum, there are so many recovered or recovering
stutterers. Granted, I am a recovering stutterer myself, but there are
days when I'd just like to give up, sit back, stutter my head off, and
talk to someone else who stutters. Whoever I call, though, is
diligently practicing their technique so...no one stutters.
I guess I just want someone I can RELATE to, and I always thought I
could relate to the population of stutterers the best out of anyone
else in the human race, but it turns out that the stutterers who I do
meet on fluency courses or stuttering forums are the really driven,
self-motivating types who are the "better" stutterers, if you can call
it that. The people who I yearn to talk to are those depressed
stutterers who barely come out of their homes but of course, they
probably wouldn't interact very much online either.
-- Cheryl
