First of all, it's important to realize that the root cause of stuttering is not psychological in nature. Stuttering has been shown to be a genetically influenced, neurological condition associated with observable, measurable differences in both the structure and function of the brain. While the exact cause of stuttering is still a bit elusive, that much is already well established. That being said, emotions are triggers for almost every stutterer. I like to explain it with this metaphor: Say speaking energy is measured with a standard measuring cup. You get 1 cup of energy, that is it. A fluent person will need only a small amount of energy to communicate verbally. Say they need a tablespoon. So we put that into the measuring cup. We still have a lot of energy! So their measuring cup looks like this: * 1 tablespoon of energy for speaking * 1/4 cup of energy for anxiety * 1/4 cup of energy for stress * 1/4 cup of energy for general excitement And hey, they still have a little energy left! They can talk without expending it all. For a stutterer, we require far more energy than a tablespoon to overcome our disfluency. We need more like 3/4 cup. A lot more energy! We don't have a lot of energy left here to overcome anxiety, stress, and excitement. Our measuring cup looks like this: * 3/4 cup to speak * 1/4 for anxiety * 1/4 for stress * 1/4 cup for general excitement That's requiring far more energy than we have, our measuring cup is full, we've depleted our reserves, and still we need more. We stutter. However! When we are talking only to ourselves, we're not needing any energy to overcome anxiety or excitement. There is no one around to 'perform' for. So our measuring cup looks more like: * 3/4 cup for speaking * 1/4 cup for stress We're pushing it a tiiiny bit, but we have enough energy to overcome our disfluency in this situation. We don't stutter. So this is why you'll hear people tell you to be more confident, or to care less, or stop being so negative. Because they see when a stutterer is void of anxiety and stress and excitement, the stutter goes away. Only the stutter hasn't gone away, not really. It's still taking us an absurd amount of energy to overcome the disfluency, we just happen to have enough energy to do so when it's not being depleted by other demands. But it is completely impractical to stop feeling emotions. Anxiety, stress, excitement, etc, they are a part of being human, and while it's a good idea to learn how to process those things in a healthy and productive manner, it is an unrealistic cure for stuttering. So long as we're requiring so much of our energy to speak, we will always be disfluent.