My two cents, people who stutter are conditionally wired to stop sending command signals to speech muscles (resulting in a speech block), if they: * feel anxiety * foresee anticipation (from negative listeners' responses) * apply sensory feedback, like feeling/tracking speech muscles during a speech block or hearing your own stutter voice * focusing on doubt, like immersing how your speech muscles are stuck and your intrusive thoughts says that you can't move them because of negative experiences **Conclusion**: Non-stutterers don't block when feeling anxious, when focusing on how or what they are saying, so why do we block (when experiencing these triggers)? So obviously, the triggers (aka anxiety, thoughts, feelings and feedback) don't cause stuttering. However, we rely on these triggers in order to decide whether we should send command signals to speech muscles (that result in fluency). In my opinion, the actual 'disorder' that we have **which causes a speech block**, is the condition (how we wired ourselves). The condition (in our programming of the [speech plan](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/11fn406/poll_do_you_understand_this_one_of_the_most/)) is: "***If I experience a trigger that is convincing enough, then I stop sending command signals to speech muscles (resulting in a block).***" Your question is: "***What exactly can you think about when having a conversation, other than what are you going to say in the conversation?***" Answer: to answer this in my own words, yes indeed, we will temporarily speak fluently when hiding/avoiding triggers like '***using distraction to stop thinking about how or what you are going to say***'. However, in the viewpoint of [desensitization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)), it's more effective to evoke anxiety by being mindful of what you are going to say while learning that it wasn't as dangerous as you previously believed while reducing responses (like *avoidance/emotional* responses). In other words, if you use distraction to avoid your trigger, then: * your mind/body cannot do its job to adjust to this anxiety and * your wired condition "***If I experience a trigger, then I stop sending command signals to speech muscles***" maintains the vicious circle. So, even if you don't stutter temporarily, it doesn't have a lasting effect to reduce the main problem of the stutter disorder