"Isn't observing the trigger and not reacting to it the same as ignoring it?" No, observing is the opposite of ignoring. Imagine this, I look at a photo of Ronaldino losing against FC Barcelona. My reaction is: I become mad. a) if I ignore the photo by focusing on television, homework or eating, then I stop reacting (I stop becoming mad). I moved my attention from the photo to something else. However, ignoring doesn't change your response and perspective b) if I don't ignore the photo, instead I observe the photo while learning to not react to the MEANING of the photo, then I also stop becoming mad. I should observe the photo and learn that the photo is not important enough to become mad. Now it improved my response and perspective (my mentality improved) If we are normally stuttering without any technique, then right before we stutter, we see a stutter coming. Let's call this a trigger. We react to our triggers in ways we don't even realize: we are labeling our speech problem, we stutter to dissociate ourselves from social situations, we miss fluency and we encourage or apologize to ourselves when we do compulsion (compulsion: tensing speech mechanism). Conclusion: the more we add these thoughts onto our stutter mindset, the more we attach importance to the trigger and the more stutter anticipation we unconsciously build up. Then it becomes harder to stop compulsion. Problem One second before I stutter, if I ignore the trigger 'I will stutter now' by focusing on breathing, on the present (mindfulness) or on other people, then I stop thinking about the trigger. My attention moves from trigger to 'something else'. The disadvantage about this is: if I ignore trigger, then I don't learn to become resilient against the trigger. I don't learn to remove meaning from the trigger. I don't learn to disconfirm expectancy. Solution: If I observe the trigger 'I will stutter now' (instead of focusing on other things) and I observe this often enough (for many weeks), then my body and mind starts to become resilient against this thought. If I learn to not react to this trigger, then the once fearful or scary trigger that predicted a stutter, slowly loses its meaning, because I start to realize that this trigger is NOT true, this trigger is not what results in a compulsion if I don't give it a meaning. If I think "I will stutter now", then one could say that this thought is just a thought without judgement or meaning. Having a thought is not the problem. The problem however comes when I give the thought a meaning by justifying the compulsion by using a trigger as a reason/excuse. If we make conditions to justify our compulsion then we REACT to the trigger, we attach importance to the trigger and then it becomes harder to stop the compulsion.