***Just keep asking yourself WHY?: Why do I trigger a fear-panic response when negatively evaluating feared words, anticipated situations, social pressure, saying our name, stutter pressure, simply wanting to speak with someone, etc?*** Because somehow, it works or it works in that moment. You avoid a difficult word, it "works" in many cases because you "avoid" a word that you know will make you stutter. In the long run, you'll accumulate a list of words that you avoid, and suddenly you’re cornered, and there’s no way out, and you’ll end up stuttering. Do you know what's cool? It's that the same sounds you use in the "feared" words, you can also say fluently in other words. There's nothing about the word itself that makes you stutter, but because you anticipate the difficulty in that word, you start to present emotional responses and make unnecessary efforts, and that’s when stuttering in that word has a very high chance of happening. I had a huge list of words in my adolescence, today I don't even remember what they were. Sometimes I have a millisecond of thought or I remember, "This word used to be hard for me," that affects me enough sometimes, and I feel like I’m going to stutter, and I do, but I speak even while stuttering. Stuttering on it helps with the process: I stuttered on word x -> despite that, everything was fine, I wasn’t punished by anyone and for nothing -> I don’t need to anticipate its difficulty next time. It’s a way of trying to teach my body that IT’S OKAY to stutter, and it doesn’t need to trigger all the alert signals (the conditioned stimuli) that further hinder fluency. ***Social pressure*** You have to deal with your internal demons. People who stutter generally have to deal with some (or all) of the following questions: Why does appearing fluent matter so much to me? Why do I attribute so much value to appearing fluent to others? What do I fail to do because of a lack of courage, and blame stuttering for? Do I really accept being a person who stutters and that people can see this? What is my difficulty in accepting myself as I am? Am I accepting the implications and difficulties of being a person who stutters, or am I avoiding living my life so I don’t have to deal with it? These are important questions that every person who stutters needs to resolve, and they will certainly help with issues like the ones you raised (along with improving mental health). Psychotherapy is a good suggestion. ***Agreed! I think we can all acknowledge that excessive muscle tension is unnecessary and maladaptive, making it a hindrance to fluency. That’s one perspective/viewpoint. But the key question is: How exactly does unnecessary physical tension interfere with fluency?*** I believe (theory) that we end up improperly stimulating part of the musculature necessary for automatic speech, and we don’t let speech happen as it should. If I'm contracting a muscle that’s necessary and used when speech happens automatically, I’ll have trouble making speech happen automatically. If I’m mumbling, I’m using the same musculature necessary for automatic speech, and that hinders it. And yes! I believe we are led to believe that the "strategy" is working since eventually, the word comes out. I end up attributing the success of the word to the effort I put into it, when in fact, there is no relation. It’s the same for people who clench their fists when stuttering, and believe that movement is important for fluency, when in fact, it has no relation. (4/4)