I experienced it both ways. If I believe that I will stutter on a certain letter, than this self-fulfilling prophecy creates 'pressure' that stuttering will likely occur (aka story-telling), and this puts high demand on the speech control system.. and then I find I stutter more I've experienced it too with loud noise. I was in high school, and I always told myself that speaking with loud noise, the background, is easier and that I will stutter less. I believed this so much, that I gave myself many reasons - that basically justify this self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, I told myself that I'll stutter less during loud noise, because other people will notice my disfluencies less. Or because, during loud noise others have less time to take the effort to judge my disfluencies One day I was walking in the mall with my mother when I was still in high school. I explained to my mum that I stutter less with loud noise. But my mother strongly convinced me that it doesn't make sense, after all, she also stutters and in her experience she actually stutters more during loud noise. And so, in the shopping mall my mother gave me reasons why it makes more sense to stutter more during loud noise, such as: "During loud noise you can't really focus on controlling your speech effectively so of course you'll stutter more during loud noise". She gave me many other reasons And, on that same day in the mall, where there was loud noise, my speech suddenly became very severe - just because I started believing that loud noise makes my stutter worse. It's like the story (that I explained in the beginning) that I justify of believing I will stutter on a certain word or stutter in a certain situation So, to bring a close to this ridiculously already long comment, it's likely that all these beliefs, attitudes, psychological constructs etc - they all distort the view how we look at stuttering which makes us vulnarable for (or intolerant to) triggers (that trigger stuttering) From [this ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/xr6luy/tips_for_people_who_stutter_advice_on_how_to/) post: The more we engage in the story-telling of loud noise (as a trigger), the deeper we go into the stutter disorder/problem, the less we are in touch with reality and so the more we doubt. Ironically, in going into 'stutter problem land', we sometimes feel we are getting deeper into reality, but it’s exactly the opposite: the more we go into the stutter problem, the further away we go from reality, and thus, the stutter problem has already lured us into stutter problem land with yet another argument (or reason why it makes sense)