>*"when I was on tricyclic antidepressants for OCD and even when I wasn't thinking about anything, my stuttering continued. So in short, isn't ignoring it normally beneficial for stuttering? It's like accepting stuttering."* From my own understanding. Young CWS (children who stutter.. age 3).. from what I've read, their stuttering is primarily triggered in response to fear of social rejection (unconditioned stimulus i.e., without prior learning) **(automatic response)**. Primarily operated by the basal ganglia (because their neocortex is not yet fully developed). If this 'automatic response' overtime becomes conditioned (i.e., associated with conditioned stimuli) (i.e, approach avoidance conflict) it becomes very hard to resolve (science from my previous post from yetsterday - states that the approach avoidance conflict is the hardest to resolve out of the other 3 conflicts). Overtime, young children who stutter may forget about the unconditioned stimulus (fear of social rejection), and focus more on details (unimportant things) during speech execution (i.e., they fight the release threshold, which means, they continue speaking anyway whenever the basal ganglia say "no, I won't allow it"). Anyway.. I think that the "fear of social rejection" is often ignored or outright denied by stutterers (especially if they don't notice it consciously) (i.e., extinction failure.. because such a mindset/attitude prevents us from properly addressing the fear of social rejection/validation to fine-tune speech execution I think). Conclusion: So I think that anti-depression pills are more effective on people who have learned to accept their fear of social rejection (unconditioned stimulus) but SPECIFICALLY that primarily influences the fine-tuning of speech execution.. and thus, not any other kind of fear of social rejection. I'm intentionally not speaking about conditioned stimuli such as social anxiety for obvious reasons (I mean, anti-depression may reduce those conditioned stimuli.. but in the end.. all conditioned stimuli (whether anxiety-based or not) are directly linked to the unconditioned stimuli - so if we use antidepression medication, it likely works best if it leads to addressing the unconditioned stimulus and its value judgements (rather than each and every conditioned stimulus). It's similar to this example: if we hide ourselves from social interaction and speak fluently alone, it doesn't actually address the unconditioned stimulus in the long run. This same principle applies to usage of antidepressents, same with doing acceptance therapy, same with exposure therapy, desensitization etc etc, sure they can help address conditioned stimuli (such as social anxiety or stutter presssure) and sure it may be effective in some PWS (because those conditioned stimuli are primarily learned during their unique stuttering development/experience).. but in the end, ultimately I think it will be much more effective to target the unconditioned stimuli and its value judgements that are directly connected to the finetuning of speech execution (whether by using antidepressants or not) (I mean, I think this will likely significantly increase the chance towards stuttering remission!)