Great post! In my experience, if I tense my throat muscles as tight as possible, then I can still open or close my throat, larynx or vocal chords. Why don't you try this right now? So, right now 1. tense your throat as much as you can 2. and then pronounce the letter /A/ See? You didn't stutter. So, the physical tension itself, in my opinion, can never lead to a block. Did you try it just now also? The reason that I explain this to you, is that I perceive that people who stutter often blame '*articulatory tension*', but.. as you just now experienced, tension can never lead to a block. The problem is, if we **blame** or **rely on** a certain amount of articulatory tension, then we may use this to affect our motor timing cue to initiate speech movements. In the same way, anticipation, a negative emotion or any other trigger can never lead to a block, unless we for example blame this trigger or rely on it to affect [volitional](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/14u05gm/tips_to_improve_stuttering_from_the_research/) motor control, in my opinion. In this viewpoint, I argue that [learned helplessness](https://www.google.com/search?q=learned+helplessness) is a real problem in stuttering.