Thanks for sharing. It's always interesting to read about these journeys. My stutter stems from a vicious dog attack when I was an infant, but I see it more as an alternative neural pathway for generating speech motor commands that got burned-in during this traumatic event. It can still be genetic, some people are just more sensitive, and nothing is wrong with that, it's only a predisposition. The science behind it is that this alternative neural path goes through our reptilian brain instead of the frontal lobe and is therefore very sensitive for interference from amygdala (fear), hypothalamus (excitement) and other emotion centers located there. So whenever we are stressed, afraid, sick, tired or just feeling lazy the brain can fall back to this more instinctive/automatic part of the brain to do the "speech writing" and that's where the voice commands for loudest vowels and emphasis words get botched (that's why we always block on the punchline or the most important word/sound in a senetence) in a similar way like fear can freeze a person. The reptilian brain has no good tools for generating new complex movements like speech, only stress hormones and well learned, conditioned responses to protect us from immediate danger. This explains why we can anticipate a block in advance and yet still be in shock when it happens (we sense the faulty programming but our intention is to speak). So what you did here is that you reprogrammed your brain to not link speech with emotions and take the right neural pathway, through the frontal lobe, also by coordinating with it with your breathing. It's ironical that the more complex we make our speaking habits (tempo control, breathing management, hand gestures, articulation etc) the better it becomes. I think it's because it forces us out of the low bandwidth pathway or brain is used to resorting to. This might also explain why your self-speech was to your detriment. I do it myself sometimes, but only when using techniques that will reinforce the correct speech pattern, such as word streching, articulation, recording myself on video etc. If I would do it in a low-effort/casual way, the brain might get more lazy and reinforce the shortcut through the reptilian brain. Maybe this was happening to you? Anyhow, good luck my man. Bless you for spreading positive vibes in this community and hope that you will continue to help others.