Very well said, nuke! You always have a great way of wording things. >I don't have the resources to also care about them, since I'm already very involved in speaking. Exactly my feelings. This is why I speak so much of self-care. If you're exhausting resources on what the person you're speaking to is feeling, seeing, thinking, and how you can 'control that' (and you can't; it's futile), then you're shorting yourself out of energy you could be using on yourself. I also don't see anything positive or worthwhile coming from a goal of having no goal. If I stopped working on my fluency, I'd be physically harming myself. I don't mean that in an abstract way, mouth biting is a serious tic of mine, and it takes a lot of speaking and exercise to maintain peak motor control. But even if I didn't, the experience of stuttering is frustrating for the speaker, not only because of perceived judgement or audience discomfort. But because we can't control our body and that's just a shitty feeling, regardless of other influences. I tend to find many stutterers who have harvested their crops of fucks to give regarding other people's reaction to their stutter still find themselves weighed down with the impact of their stutter. Only now, we're weighed down with things we can actually improve upon. We begin embracing the challenges we have control over instead of wasting energy on those we don't. And that's a very empowering and energizing mindset to be in.