Comment #2: Even “acceptance” is a stimulus. For example, here is my personal experience with "acceptance": When I fully identify with being a stutterer and "accept" it, I start stuttering more. But when I slip into a mindset of simply *speaking* like a non-stutterer—without trying to control, adjust, or fix anything—I speak fluently, and my mind temporarily “forgets” how to stutter. Of course, my subconscious will eventually, after some time, remind me that "it's time again to stutter", which primarily occurs (in my own experience) whenever I start reminding myself that I'm a stutterer. But if I remind myself I have a reason to speak like a non-stutterer—like when I’m teaching in school—I can hold on to that fluency state or fluency mindset for longer. And when I'm back again with my family, I start to stutter again because, when I'm with my family I remind myself: "*They know that I stutter and I've already accepted myself as a stutterer around family*." Resulting in stuttering. Some people in the subreddit report that they change their "feared, anticipated words" every week, so one week they stutter more on words starting with /P/ and the other week it's with other sounds like /M/. I believe this has to do with our perception (i.e., cognitive appraisal). This phenomenon is what's called: conditioning where we associate stimuli with stuttering (or rather, with the malfunctioning of the appropriateness regulator or "filter" to execute speech). That's just my own take on it In [this ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/168odat/do_you_speak_more_fluently_if_you_speak_slower/)poll, they discuss the stimulus: "speaking more slowly". Sometimes this increases stuttering and for others this decreases stuttering. I'd say this is primarily do to the way we view at stuttering at the time of speech executoin, wouldn't you say so too? In [this ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/12yiriq/do_you_stutter_more_or_less_if_you_speak_with/)poll, they discuss the stimulus: "speaking with family/friends" (52% is more fluently) and "speaking with strangers" (48% is more fluently in this situation). In [this ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/x2d4bs/has_your_stutter_changed_ever_since_you_accepted/)poll, they discuss the stimulus "acceptance". I think that "acceptance" (the stimulus itself) isn't what leads to a fluctuation in the approach-avoidance conflict (I think). Rather, it's our reliance on value judgements (i.e., the reasoning / viewpoint that we have about those stimuli that we subconsciously associate with triggering the approach-avoidance conflict and which would seem to result in a malfunctioning of our appropriateness regulator or "filter" for speech execution to proceed i.e., a stimulus seems to increase or decrease stuttering - based on our need to speak better than "signalling" (i.e., instructing) to kick-start the automatic processes, in my opinion.