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Stuttering and self-esteem Stuttering is linked to low self-esteem, but why and how can we improve it? I've been thinking about this today after reading about the "The Psychology of Self-Esteem" by Nathaniel Branden (1969). From the book's Wiki page, "Branden discusses pathological anxiety, which he traces to a lack of self-esteem, particularly a lack of self-confidence. He further connects this to feelings of guilt and depression, which he views as aspects of anxiety. The last problem he discusses is one he calls "social metaphysics", which he describes as "the psychological syndrome that characterizes a person who holds the minds of other men, not objective reality, as his ultimate psycho-epistemological frame of reference."" I believe his basic idea is that man's mental problems boil down to the fact he has adopted a sluggish, undemanding cognitive style that is fundamentally disengaged from reality. He does not think or try to understand his life, and simply coasts through, making as few waves as possible. Branden posits that this may be related to an emotionally turbulent childhood, which impresses upon the child that reality is confusing, and so the child gives up trying to make sense of it. This manifest itself into later adulthood, when the child, now fully grown, has adopted a similarly passive relationship to life and the people around him. To me this is interesting as performance anxiety plays a huge role in stuttering, particularly when authority figures are involved. And if we are experiencing the act of stuttering through the frame of the listener, than through our own reality, can we affect change by thinking differently? Links: 1) Psychology of the self: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Self-Esteem 2) The disowned self: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disowned_Self