The straight up version: Its definately cognitive. Fake your confidence till you make it, by forgetting you stutter. Stuttering is no more than a tunnelvision, and to get out you focus on the external world while speaking. You dont need to be convinced that you can talk fluently, you are born talking fluently and you are only scared. Prove yourself you dont have to be. Getting out of tunnelvision : multitask what u hear and see to forget ur thoughts. Then move up a level and add observing emotions to your multitasking so you can understand what you want to say without words. This is how regular people speak The elaborated version: Ah yeah. I feel you on the inconsistency, for me it was a lot of anxiety that i had to unpack - this took me months to complete, but ofcourse that differs from person to person: • ⁠Sit still and commit to stopping every activity, so that includes minor movements, thoughts, engagement in indentifying etc. This always does the trick of making me rather uncomfortable, and because you can do this alone you can mimic the feelings you have when you stutter. The more you fail at sitting still the more you actually are succeeding. The mind will give in at some point - it might take hours the first session. However, the more still you are able to make the mind the longer you can stay with a particular thought. This creates a magnified effect of exposure therapy. That said, exposing yourself to build tolerance to that built up anxiety takes time and stability. Now i have one more thought to leave with you and it is more speculative, as i am still processing the idea in my mind: • ⁠Stuttering is a self-induced projection, coming from shame and guilt originating from a realisation that verbal influence has very deep consequences. Most possibly circling around a dormant capacity to engage in behavior that is both assertive and courteous. Being at a verbal advantage in this realm can be frightening when you observe even minute effects, leading to a mistrust based perhaps an immoral imbalance between your verbal power to assess and anothers’. But whether we did nerf our speech for the betterment of others or not, at existential times like this it is no use to find ourselves. We are already currently staring to ourselves in the depths of our eyes and should embrace what is there. Power in this world can mean a lot of good, our voices might just have been locked away to prevent corruption in an attempt of pure moral altruïsm. And the literal version: What solves stuttering is being able to devote yourself to hearing the world around you (excluding your speech). You need to "hear" the sounds around you more than the things you say yourself. You don't have to consciously change anything about your speech, it's not broken, it's just overthinking it as many say. You are right. Overthinking, can be done in visualization or in auditory repesentation. To block your thoughts AND keep talking, multitask the following: Hearing + Seeing + Emotions (and let the speaking work by itself). If it is difficult for you to multitask, which is common among stutterers, you can use the following exercise: 1. Commit 100% to not making choices. Do not react to a thought, a stimulus, a feeling, etc. Just sit down, and commit to doing nothing for hours, as long as you can. 2. Make the choice to hear only your surroundings, and no other choices. 3. Make the choice to hear and see, and no other choice. 4. Make the choice to hear, see and feel emotions, and no other choice. 5. Choose to hear, see, feel emotions and speak, and no other choice. You should then be able to multitask hearing, seeing, feeling (emotions) and speaking. Your focal points when seeing, are details. Your focal points when hearing, is silences.