Why do we stutter more with anxiety? And others stutter more with family/friends? And others stutter even when they are alone? [major breakthrough in stuttering]

Why do we stutter more with anxiety? And others stutter more with family/friends? And others stutter even when they are alone? [major breakthrough in stuttering] Some people stutter more with anxiety, while other people stutter the same in all situations (even when they are alone). Why? I have a stutter disorder too. I wanted to know the answer. So I've read too many research studies. And I will try to answer this question, this is what I found: \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ I think that most of us have experienced anxiety, doubt, negative reactions, subjective feelings of loss of control, or anticipation (anticipation of difficulty speaking or communicating), or other such speech errors that we perceive as a problem, as a speech error or to be avoided. These are all considered **speech errors** These speech errors can trigger stuttering. Because if we perceive anxiety, anticipation etc, as a problem, as an error, and to be avoided, then, in the internal representation we start perceiving a mismatch (aka inner conflict). This can result in being unable to say our thoughts out loud (yes: we stutter) Likely most of us realize that this mechanism (that wants/needs to avoid speech errors) plays a crucial role in executing the speech movements/articulators, particularly whenever we perceive that these speech errors exceed a certain **threshold**. So, it's a mechanism that prevents execution of speech movements. An execution prevention mechanism. An inhibitory mechanism. An error avoidance mechanism. A defensive mechanism. An execution **threshold** mechanism. This (execution threshold) mechanism seems to fluctuate from word to word, in that, if we perceive our name important enough to say, then the execution threshold rises too high to activate the speech muscles (that are necessary) to say the desired word. Then we stutter. This (execution threshold) mechanism is similar to Johnson's hypothesis: effort to avoid stuttering triggers stuttering. And, similar to Sheehan: the desire to speak (approach) conflicts with the fear of stuttering (avoidance) resulting in stuttering. If we listen to the little voice in our head (inner speech), then we likely won't notice enough speech errors that warrant the amount of speech blocks that occur. Stuttering occurs when speech plans are perceived to be complete and free of semantic, syntactic or phonological errors. Most speech errors are likely perceived (imagined) errors that result in stuttering. So. How did we learn to poorly fine-tune this execution threshold? (in this way) The tuning of the execution threshold reflects the sum total of our past experiences of saying similar things in similar situations. Suggesting that this mechanism becomes poorly fine-tuned (resulting in stuttering) when the negative past experiences of speaking in similar situations outweigh the positive experiences. Negative experiences of our speech performance, and social feedback - can lead to distorted beliefs, like: * the need for a higher quality of speech like the need to speak more perfectly or error-free (in other words, perfectionism) * unnecessarily labeling mild error-prone speech as a stutter disorder * the need to overrely on cues that we draw on to detect significantly more errors than there actually are such as by unnecessarily scanning for threat/anticipation, pre-articulatory rehearsal or relying on sensory feedback to check whether our words will be good enough (like proprioception, tactile feedback, efference copy, pre-articulatory error monitoring, conflict monitoring, monitoring of the listener and his responses) * perceiving it as a problem that listeners (like parents) are incapable of understanding us or unwilling to try, no matter how perfectly we speak * the need to focus on maintaining speech accuracy (or clarity) over fluency (or the forward flow of speech) * being unaware of an underlying mild speech-production impairment (due to genetics/neurology) but not sufficiently so to notice it