Yeah, we are unwilling to make the sound because we are afraid of stuttering or how it will come out (most likely). When I block the big fear I have is that the unknown of how big or ugly the sound might come out. It's too scary for me to risk it. When you say the word/sound gets stuck, I understand how you feel. I understand that you may want to say the word but it just won't come out. The fact of the matter is, no one is grabbing your throat. No one is making you do this. You have systems in your body which sense this as some kind of grave danger and you lock up automatically because the perceived risk is too high. Repititions are actually a sign of progress because every though you're still avoiding by backing off the feared sound, you are at least making it in the very beginning. When you block you are unwilling to even utter the feared sound. I know I felt that blocking _sounded_ better than repititions in my mind, but after speaking with listeners most would rather hear you stutter getting the word out than just sit in silence. When people think of stuttering, they think of disfluencies because that is what clean, natural stuttering sounds like. They think of porky pig's disfluencies or maybe they'll think of prolongations. What they don't think of is blocking because that is an even greater departure from clean natural stuttering. These are all things a **knowledgeable** slp who understands stuttering can help with. Repititions are better than blocking because it's one step closer to stuttering freely and one step further away from avoidance which is what causes most of the problem.