How Big Of A Role Does Perception Play In Your Stutter?

How Big Of A Role Does Perception Play In Your Stutter? Looking to hear other people's experiences and stories about this. How much of a role does your own perception of life itself play a role in your stutter? Here's my story: I've been stuttering since age 5. It's come and gone. It was never so severe that it got in the way of me talking to people and socializing. I always managed that. And in my teenage years, it almost completely went away. My speech was 90% fluent. Here's the interesting bit about how my personality ties in to all this. Before I was 18, most people would have called me '' lazy '', '' unmotivated '', '' not serious at all ''...........and I was all that stuff Lol. Never cared about my grades. Didn't think about my future. I had no strict goals. I just lived in the moment. All I cared about was having fun. Then at 17 I underwent a radical shift. It's too long of a story to describe, but I changed into a different person. I became serious, disciplined, future and success oriented. Started working out a lot, did a lot of thinking and research about my future plans, started to dress differently too (more formal), started studying a lot. This was also when my speech impediment came back and became really bad. This change was a good thing. But on some level, I attribute it to how bad my stutter has become. The previous me had a different perspective of life. I viewed life from a fun-oriented perspective - care free and relaxed. Not self conscious. My motivations in engaging in actions were more spontaneous. But now I view life from a more cautious perspective. I'm not care free and relaxed anymore.....now I am just serious about everything. Almost as if everything is a test which needs to be done well and everything needs to be planned. Heightened awareness. Maybe unhelpful awareness. I miss being an ignorant idiot. My speech was much better then. Had much less anxiety back then, and I had more fun. I think becoming serious about life has made me put tremendous pressure on myself and that's the reason why my speech impediment has become bad.