[bsenftner]

Words that begin with a consonant cause me to repeat that initial "ka". If I try to suppress that, it just gets worse. Due to that, I try to find words that say the same without a starting consonant, resulting in odd word usage that distracts from my points. Something kind of bad, if I'm angry, I do not stutter, so if I really need to express something I generate an anger to say it; not at my audience, but just will an angry state of mind and then I can speak without the stutter. People that know I stutter, but not my angry means of not stuttering, get surprised.

[o_____________o]

Yeah word replacement is exhausting, and it does feel like the two fluent states for me are extreme relaxation and a very specific amount of localized stress. Lots of... unnatural pauses. Sometimes warmup sounds like "uhhh" that can inject a kind of vowel before a word. Have you tried listening to an AI version of yourself speaking fluently? I have and sent it to some friends – one of their points of feedback was that the cadence isn't like mine. My cadence is built around stuttering avoidance!