***Fear-panic response – How do we minimize its impact or increase our tolerance to conditioned stimuli?*** I don’t know if we can increase tolerance directly, since the stimulus is there to precisely serve this function: to provoke physiological responses that are important biologically and evolutionarily, but as a consequence, they affect fluency negatively. What helps for me, and I believe reduces the intensity of emotions, are some mental and behavioral strategies: Mental: I know I will stutter eventually, and this is not the end of the world. So I don’t need to fear that moment because it will come, and I can handle it perfectly. I study and apply Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with my patients and with myself, so I’m not afraid of negative thoughts, I don’t believe them when they invade my mind, so they don’t destabilize me emotionally like they do for other people who stutter. Behavioral: I don’t feel embarrassed or retreat when I stutter. In a stronger stuttering moment, I even talk about it openly. I’ve talked about it in the classroom and other situations, like in Instagram videos. Stuttering, thus, has gradually become a less aversive stimulus for me, to the point that, TODAY, stuttering provokes very mild emotions (i.e., conditioned responses like tachycardia, freezing, etc... of low intensity). So low that sometimes I don’t even notice it. At a certain point in my life, if someone noticed and asked, “Do you stutter?” it would have made me feel bad for a week. Today I talk openly about it and deal with it differently. ***Should we use compensatory strategies to address the perceived conflict that arises due to negatively evaluating the conditioned stimuli that result in a fear-panic response (or reflex freeze response), right before we stutter? If so, how exactly?*** In other words, we are talking about two forms of fluency: 1) the one that arises from the automatic speech process, and 2) the one that arises when we use compensatory strategies. If you find that strategies work for you and you can handle them in a healthy way in your life, and you feel they help and provide a good experience with yourself, then yes, you can use them. Personally, I don’t because: using compensatory speech techniques brings my focus back to stuttering and fluency, a concern I’ve already overcome in my life. For me, it’s easier to stutter, ignore it, and move on, than to keep applying techniques in search of greater fluency. I can handle the social implications of stuttering in my life, so I don’t feel the need for perfect fluency or to apply techniques to improve it. For me, it would be more distressing, since I’ve never been able to apply techniques with much success. For me, it’s simply liberating to be able to speak without the turmoil of thoughts about increasing fluency, what to do to not show I’m stuttering, etc. As a therapist, I notice in my patients tells me: techniques are easy to apply within the setting of speech therapy, but harder to apply in real-life contexts. Thus, it becomes frustrating for them to apply so many techniques inside the office and have them work, but not work outside of it. So it can become an aversive and frustrating experience, with the feeling that they can’t do it, they’re not doing it right, or they’re not practicing enough. Some people who stutter will manage to master one technique or another and apply them successfully without these impacts, and that's fine, it’s a personal choice. Politically speaking, I advocate that people who stutter should be able to stutter freely without the need to hide or compensate for their speech characteristics, since diversity is a human component, but this depends on each person’s values. I apply full (or almost full) acceptance of stuttering in my life. But stopping the use of compensatory strategies, combined with a certain emotional balance and behavioral resources I’ve developed, has helped my fluency a lot.++ (3/4)