Ok, I’ll explain. I’m not claiming to be a psychiatrist or psychologist, but this simply makes sense. Let’s say when you were a kid, every time you spoke up in class other kids would laugh at you and make fun of your stutter. You stop raising your hand to speak in class because your brain has more or less made the connection that stuttering equates to harassment, which further results in you being fearful of speaking up in class because you think to yourself that if you do, you might get teased for it again. Because of those experiences, and given you’re a kid and don’t rationally think about your stutter, (and being irrational or illogical doesn’t only pertain to children) your brain will consciously or not make the connection that stuttering equates to being laughed at or whatever the case may be. Because of those trauma experiences, your brain has “trained” itself to be fearful or even anxious when stuttering, even if you have no present experience of harassment when stuttering. Because of those experiences, you might become anxious every time you stutter, and your brain goes into a flight or response when you do stutter. So, let’s say this is the case, now you would have to have stuttering experiences that result in positive reactions from whoever you may be talking to in order to “retrain” your brain to not react the way is previously did when you do stutter. Look at victims of child abuse, many of them continue to relive that trauma, just like a stutterer might, even though the chances of future abuse are slim to none statistically. Those people go to counseling to work out their emotions or thought process because many of those victims cannot rationally piece out what happened to them, and then after the self realization and counseling they find peace in their circumstances. It’s a known fact that many children stutter at a young age while they are developing their flow of speech; boys more so than girls, and most children outgrow that stutter and completely forget they ever had one. Like I said, I’m no psychiatrist but forcing myself into situations where I’m almost certain I will stutter, and stuttering in front of those people, and then seeing how they react (positively) gives myself PROOF that stuttering does not equate to harassment. You can try and tell yourself that stuttering is ok and people won’t care (which is true) but the second you step into the spotlight you will tense up and freak out. If you can’t relate to this then you are an outlier on this sub my friend. Hope this helps Also you said in an above comment that their is “no known mechanism mechanism about... that we know of YET, which is right. We don’t know anything about our brain, mind, and consciousness in the grand scheme of things. Personally, there have been times in front of new people where I stutter so bad people would probably make the assumption that I have an extreme stutter; almost so bad that I can’t say 3 words without blocking or stuttering. And when I’m with my close friends and family I talk completely fluently. I don’t stutter when I think, do you? There is no doubt a connection between emotions and stuttering, it’d be foolish to say otherwise, and maybe you can agree on that. So to conclude, we know almost nothing about the human mind and how it perceives and reacts to emotions. I’m a big fan of stoic philosophy and it’s helped me rationalize my beliefs and thoughts about my stutter, and has resulted in less stuttering over all. And one other thing (like I said there is just too much to type here) if I’m being my true authentic self, and my mind is in the present (not thinking about other things, especially my stutter) I’m a flawless and fluent speaker. Thought perfect fluency is never fluent, everybody stutters because most of us think faster than we can speak, and that is very true.