I consider myself a pretty confident stammerer. I think confidence in stammering is really about getting to a point where you don't feel any shame about the fact that you have a neurological disorder. I think there is a difference between using speech techniques to feel comfortable and develop fluency if that is your goal and using techniques to try to hide the fact that you have a stammer. For me, this means that I use techniques to mitigate physical discomfort, tension and fatigue I feel when blocking and generally trying to make words that really don't want to happen, or to be more efficient and get information across in good time (for a practical reason) . However, when I am doing a lot of repeating little sounds (W-W-work) and particularly elongations of sounds (wwwwwork) and its not really making me feel physically tense to get them out or interrupting the flow of my speech as much, I try to just accept that they are happening and continue. I find that when I try to change my stammer for anything other than practical reasons, like to hide it or make it less obvious, that is when is start to feel that shame, which leads to anxiety for me. This will of course mean different things for everyone though. Basically, if I am truly using a technique for myself, and to achieve goals like being comfortable, or working in a fast pased job or something then it doesn't seem to affect my self confidence but if I start making changes solely for how I will sound to other people, that's when I can get into the difficult zone. Obviously this is just what works for me! I hope this helps at all 😊