Stuttering as a cause of social deficiency?

[AstralMystic]

I have begun to really assess my own life situation lately, and while I'm not overly sad or angry about what I have begun to notice, I must say I'm far from impressed. For most of my life, as far back as I can really recall, people have treated me kind of differently than other people. Of course this is apparently very common with us stutters because people insist upon, even this day and age, thinking we are slow or in need of special help. Fine, I accept this and I hold no grudge against them. What I do hold something of a mild grudge against though is the systems that failed to teach people as children, that we stutterers, and for that matter people with many other differences too, are capable of being looked at as equals, and knowing the meaning of it. I have begun to fear now that a lifetime of being treated like I'm different from others, has hindered my ability of become fully socially adept. It's difficult to try and explain, but I know that I can't seem to ever figure out how to react in certain situations, such as a person crying in my presence, or trying to stop two people from getting into a fight. There are many more examples I could have used as well. Goodness knows, I think about the possibility of marriage at times, and I must admit it doesn't look to promising. The idea of traveling solo, which is a dream of mine, I'm not too sure about either.

Now under most conditions, I'd have just blamed all the weirdness of people around me on the stutter and been done with worrying about it. However I have noticed one random fact that threw my thinking off course. Now people seem to be treating me differently in some cases, (thankfully not even half) in internet chat rooms too. Strange that a stutterer would be different from non-stutterers while communicating only in text mode. :confused: I have not yet come up with other ways to test this out, but do hope to. I have begin to fear that the social differences I find, are not so simple anymore. I think now that people's treatment of us as children could risk some stutterer's social skills as adults. I would be very interested in hearing other people's thoughts on this. :cool: