I agree that PWS tense speech muscles (e.g., jaw, mouth, laryngual and respiratory muscles). These are a few reasons why a *person who stutters* tenses speech muscles, like: * **inaccurate knowledge**: in the lack of a better solution he tries to speak fluently by tensing speech muscles (**unhelpful strategy**) * **fear of abandonment**: he has negative experiences that silent blocks lead to listeners leaving him, interrupting him mid-speech, ignoring him and other negative listener's responses (**reaction to triggers**) * inaccurate knowledge or fear of abandonment then leads to '*tensing speech muscles*' to let the listener know that he is still speaking (**secondary characteristic**) * **accepting stuttering**: he gives in to the stutter process/vicious circle resulting in '*allowing triggers*' to tense speech muscles, because he is trying to cope with stuttering (**conditional expression**) **Conclusion**: If we could simply accept that our speech has a tendency to be error prone, then we would probably never develop a stutter despite the underlying neurological weaknesses. It may be more effective to feel tension and speak anyway. To feel fear (of negative listeners responses or stuttering anticipation) and speak anyway. In other words, we can instruct to move speech muscles while feeling fear or tension. Therefore, the issue is not fear or tension. The issue is that we have developed a habit of: * depending on reducing fear or tension * blaming fear or tension * distracting ourselves from: instructing to move speech muscles, e.g., by immersing ourselves in intrusive thoughts to lose faith in our ability to 'instruct to move speech muscles'. You can test this out for yourself: (1) feel tension and fear, and (2) instruct/decide to send command signals to move speech muscles. Conclusion: see? You can say the word without blocking, the issue was apparantly never tension or fear, it was 'blaming' tension or fear and 'needing' to reduce tension or fear which removed our responsibiliy to instruct to move speech muscles during a block