I'm with you on the feedback loops. Especially when it comes to avoidance. There are certain sounds that are a real problem for me, and the more I avoid them the more fearful they become. Thus more tension and anxiety. Stuttering is so weird and variable. I have those rare days of sponteous fluency for seemingly no reason, then sometimes on days when I've had 8 hours of sleep and seem to be functioning at full cognitive power I'll stutter worse than ever. I think that exacerbates the anxiety for me, that sense that I don't have control and at any moment my stutter can turn on me. I haven't had a lot of speech therapy, though. Some when I was a kid. The book "self-therapy for the stutter" has helped me a lot. I do think the key (in conjunction with the things you mentioned) is to own it, be okay to stutter openly (with help from speech tools), and basically move through the fear instead of running away from it. But it's not easy. Thanks for your words and best of luck to you!