>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? That depends what problem you are trying to solve. Reducing fear is indeed one of many strategies, but wouldn't it be great to be able to speak freely even with that fear? Of course it would. But in examining my own mind and experience, fear made my speech less fluent and made my life miserable in other ways. Addressing my anxiety issues and reducing fear wasn't about fear being an error - it was about feeling less miserable. The fact that addressing my fear and anxiety made my speech naturally more fluent is fortunate happenstance, for which I am ever grateful for, but that wasn't specifically my goal. While I could see how my speech was linked to my well-being, I had other problems, and it was fruitless to look at my life entirely through the lens of dysfluent speech. If the goal is to not stutter, there is a simple solution - don't speak unless certain of fluency. Of course, this is not practical or desirable. If the goal is to speak as well as possible in the current moment, knowing that there will be some difficulties and that's ok, then that takes some pressure off. Accepting the difficulty eases the heightened emotionality associated with it, leaving the mind clearer to observe what's going on, and develop other strategies to deal with the other contributing factors. >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. Some people are more capable of dealing with fear of social rejection than others. Anyone with severe anxiety, whether they stutter or not, would likely want to reduce that anxiety as it can make certain aspects of life unbearable. >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? Yeah, I think fear can trigger the disruption of speech production, by conditioning, neural pathways, possibly increased cortisol and/or adrenaline, decreased dopamine and/or serotonin (I do keep meaning to read studies on this but I've got far too much on my plate at the moment). Things other than fear might trigger this system as well. Sure, figuring out that conditioning would be a great way to rewire the brain. But I think learning is impaired when fear is present compared with when fear is not present, so if you can get it out of the way, I would expect that to help, even if that's not the whole solution. It's not so much avoiding the fear. Rather, it's recognising how fear affects the whole system - general well-being and speech - and working out what you can change to move close to your desired experience, whether that's fluency, acceptance, or well-being.