>*"The question then becomes: how to reduce that fear when speaking with others?"* Yes, exactly! Great question. Perhaps we can desensitize stuttering by learning to accept it (not caring about it), and by exposing ourselves to various situations to realize that no one actually cares. As you pointed out, this differs from person to person—for example, this strategy has had 0% effect on my own approach-avoidance conflict and stuttering. My thoughts on why? Maybe it’s because it doesn’t address my own unique approach-avoidance conflict. My fear of social rejection feels much more subtle, whereas in others, it seems more strongly conditioned and tied to noticeable social anxiety. In other words, either my conditioned stimuli are different, or the relationship/association with them is different. Reducing fear can help fluency, as you pointed out. It can break the vicious cycle and reduce the approach-avoidance conflict, leading to (more) fluent speech. After all, reducing fear is one of many strategies in the deconditioning process. But at the same time I think the trap here is believing that we need to reduce the fear—as if the presence of fear (i.e., too much perceived fear) is itself an error and must be avoided in order for speech execution to proceed. wouldn't you agree? this might sound like it contradicts what I said earlier about there being a “social rejection filter,” but hear me out haha. The thing is, non-stutterers (all humans) experience fear of social rejection—or the conditioned stimuli associated with it—multiple times a day. It’s a hardwired, innate system that we’re all born with (not something learned). So perhaps it’s not wise to focus on reducing this underlying fear system itself. Perceiving fear as an error also doesn’t seem to be what triggers the approach-avoidance conflict. For example, I can perceive “saying my feared name” as an anticipated, feared word (i.e., an “imagined” error) when I’m speaking alone, but that doesn’t trigger the approach-avoidance conflict—so I don’t stutter. So I think the real issue is when I *need* (as a kind of pre-condition) to avoid that anticipated error (i.e., too much fear) in order to proceed with speech (i.e., a maladaptive value judgement / pre-condition that creates a maladaptive "filter"). Perhaps, but I could be wrong of course, that’s what seems to trigger the approach-avoidance conflict—and result in stuttering. So if I try to “reduce the fear,” what I’m essentially doing is avoiding the error (i.e., too much fear)—and this excessive error-avoidance may be what makes our internal “filter” maladaptive. Meaning that those pre-conditions become part of the problem. **Conclusion:** At its root, I don’t think “too much fear” is the problem. The real problem is the conditioning—the association between fear and the conditioned/reflexive/freeze response. So, what I’m trying to say is that fear is secondary to the maladaptive conditioned "filter" for speech execution to proceed. —What’s your own perspective on this?