Comment #5: I also agree with the former that you mentioned.. so for convenience sake, let's label this "fear". Yes indeed, I think that the approach-avoidance conflict (that ultimately result in stuttering as a manifestation).. I think this approach-avoidance conflict is triggered by our perception and expectations about the "**fear**" that you pointed out. I think it's our perception / expectation of the fear that triggers this approach-avoidance conflict (but not the fear itself), wouldn't you agree? let me give an example: When I was in primary school.. if I would feel a fear of stuttering, this would NOT increase my stuttering. Worrying about stuttering. Perceiving stutering as bad. etc. That is simply not enough to trigger the approach-avoidance conflict when I was in primary school. Otherwise I would have stuttered in primary school when I felt fear of stuttering, but this did not happen, in the sense of, in my own experience, it didn't increase my stuttering at all. You can compare it with a fear of spiders. If stutterers fear spiders and see a spider. It's likely not gonna make them stutter more. It's probably more that "conditoined fear" triggers their stuttering, such as: if they fear certain words, and fear of saying our name. But again, in primary school, if I feared saying my name, it did not trigger my stuttering at all, not even a little bit. So again, what I'm trying to convey is, that this "fear" has to be first conditioned and shaped. Conditioning means, basically, that our subconscious, over time, learns to associate stimuli (such as, fear of words, or fear of situations etc) with our speech execution "filter" to make it more socially appropriate, I think. What do you think? So, here is an example of an expectation (or value judgement): "*I should first reduce a fear of saying my name - to kick-start the automatic processes for speech execution to proceed i.e., to speak fluently*" (negative expectation) or *"I should first increase confidence for speech execution to proceed" (*positive expectation)