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Confidence I often see people write that "confidence" is directly relevant to stuttering. Or establishing "confidence" is necessary (and sufficient?) to overcoming stuttering. There was a very interesting discussion going on in the comments of a recent [thread](http://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/2gjzp0/for_those_of_you_who_enjoyed_my_blog_post_from/). I think this is an important conversation to have generally. And, so, with the contributors' permission I've made a new thread. . . The question is this: "What is the relevance of confidence to stuttering" . . But before I let you discuss I need to hop on a soap box for a bit. In my opinion, "confidence" is an empty term. I think we use confidence as a place holder for times when we don't know exactly the right word to say to convey our meaning. It is tempting for me to assume that Person1 views confidence in the same way I do. But this is not necessarily the case. For instance, Person1 might say, "I spoke with confidence." And what I take that to mean is he spoke with "authority", when in his mind Person1 was attempting to say he bravely spoke in a situation he was intimidated by. So, for the purposes of this discussion on "confidence" let's avoid the word "confidence." :) And now I'll provide excerpts from the conversation so far (I bolded two statements I agree with and might provide fodder for discussion): Person A: "My point on confidence isn't that it makes you a better speaker, but **it makes you more fearless and less likely to let ~~poor~~ [stuttered] speech affect you**. If you're confident in yourself and your speech, I believe you're more likely to ignore it [stuttering] and move on. Like move on and talk to the next person you need to without fear. If you're not confident, in my opinion (and speaking in generals), a person is more likely to let it affect them and speak less often or search for a way out, even if the speaking is required. It's a way to not run away from the problem. My idea at the end was that if you work hard, practice and use what you learn, you're going to be way better off than someone who is "more talented." I firmly believe, that even as a person who stutters, that I can be a much more effective public speaker/actor/anything really than someone who doesn't stutter. I just have to work at it. " Person B: "i get what you're saying. but it's like... i don't think "confidence" is even all that relevant to stuttering. sure, confidence issues might be correlated with stuttering, but it's by no means unique to us [people who stutter]. and again, i don't see why we should - in general - strive for confidence when it might not even do anything to our stuttering situation. i guess we could say that, in so far as someone plans on taking their speech impediment into a career with speech performance, confidence would be a nice thing to have. **but it ["confidence"] wouldn't help with the stuttering itself** (unless by some chance this particular stutterer found that the more confident they were, the less they stuttered - which must be rare, i find). this is not to say that it can't be "empowering" to be in a speech performance situation, and experience stuttering, and still manage to pull through and complete the desired performance. we all have experiences like that on a daily basis, i'm sure. but i see no universal helpfulness in telling people to just be "confident". for one, the various ways in which people stutter, the ways in which they experience the loss of control, might be completely unrelated to them feeling, or focusing on being, confident. " edit: formatting