>*" I stuttered despite not being under anxiety, fear, or pressure"* I just found a good example that I wanted to share. We know that many stutterers experience feared words that make stuttering worse. For example, words starting with the letter /A/ can become feared words in some PWS (people who stutter). However, once this feared word is conditioned.. over time, we may stutter on the "feared" word even without being consciously aware of the fear or anticipation. It has become conditioned and subconscious. That is. we slowly forget why or how we came to fear the word in the first place (based on past experiences and beliefs, which are unique for everyone). Repeated reinforcement or punishment associated with certain behaviors (such as fine-tuning speech execution) leads to automatic responses without conscious awareness. When a neutral stimulus (e.g., a word starting with /A/) is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus (i.e., in stuttering, this is most likely fear of social rejection/validation), the conditioned response (such as maladaptively finetuning speech execution), as well as the panic or freeze response become automatic and unconscious over time. In other words, repeated exposure to a stimulus (like a word, situation, belief, or sensation) leads to reduced conscious attention to it, allowing the conditioned response to operate below awareness. In terms of our bioneurology: this means that the amygdala, which processes fear and emotional responses, bypasses the prefrontal cortex, leading to subconscious panic or freeze responses that are not consciously processed. Conditioned responses (such as maladaptively fine-tuning speech execution in response to conditioned stimuli) often activate the autonomic nervous system, bypassing conscious thought and triggering physical reactions. Additionally, the conditioned stimulus is not necessarily anticipation-, or anxiety-based. For example, in my case, the value judgment "stuttering blocks are good" is also a conditioned stimulus that triggers (in my case) a subconscious panic or freeze response, where the outcome is stuttering. In this way, stuttering blocks are simply the involuntary outcome and not "learned." However, this does not negate the existence of an underlying conditioned response to conditioned stimuli (i.e., "learned") and that is mostly subconscious, agreed? Lastly, I think that it’s important to understand that conditioned stimuli are always connected to an [unconditioned stimulus ](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22what+is+an+unconditioned+stimulus%22)(such is the scientific model). In stuttering, this is most likely the fear of social rejection, fear of external validation, or something similar (i.e., a fundamental root *fear* that occurs without prior learning). Over time, automatic avoidance behaviors (e.g., avoiding speech execution or avoiding the adequately fine-tuning of speech execution - CR) occur more and more subconsciously. Anyway, this is just my own interpretation. I’m not saying that genetics or neurology do not play a role—because they likely do—but I think it’s more in the sense that if we overestimate or underestimate (i.e., hold distorted beliefs about) our own hypersensitivity or error-proneness, it can lead to maladaptive fine-tuning of our speech execution (e.g., in response to stimuli), creating a real stuttering disorder (i.e., the actual problem). Your thoughts?