I'm convinced that my stammer came from a series of traumatic incidents in childhood which are triggered by any number of things stress and anxiety among them, made 100 times worse in situations similar or related to those incidents. But there must have been something there already to create such a maladaptive response; something possibly formed before memories began to consolidate. Another maladaption was suppression of emotions, so while I may have appeared calm, my stammer was often incredibly severe, fed by unprocessed emotions which I couldn't even acknowledge. This was all about survival in the environment I grew up in. Speech therapy to change the mechanics of speech does nothing to deal with the underlying emotional state, although I did learn the iceberg theory of emotions in speech therapy but was too emotionally shut down to process them. Trauma therapy was eventually needed to deal with all that shit. In my journey, even before therapy, I discovered two major psychoemotional tenets that led to mostly fluent speech. 1. Speak from the heart. Speak your truth. Express your authentic self. This realisation began a long self-exploratory journey deep into my soul. Who the hell am I? What are my values? 2. Freedom from inner conflict. I realised that most of my speech blocks occurred when part of me wanted to say something, while another part of me didn't, or wanted to say something else. This links to number 1. Am I expressing my truth, or what I think my truth should be based on who I'm talking to or societal values? Do I believe what I'm saying? It's the other person listening? Is there something about this situation or person that makes me uncomfortable and therefore suppresses my self-expression? Figuring out how to resolve these inner conflicts massively improved my speech. My stammer then became an indicator of my emotional state, my issues with certain situations or types of people, where I need to improve how and what I communicate, and how far I am from my true self. Of course, all this can be exhausting, and sometimes i just need to let go and accept what is. Sometimes my stammer is worse and I simply don't have to energy to deal with the root causes as I do when specifically delving into these things, but knowing that I can helps with self-acceptance which is a big part of knowing your authentic self, and gives me ammo for the next round of self-exploration.