>*"What has been the best book you ever read on stuttering that also helped reducing stutter massively? I'm curious what books you would recommend, one that you feel has massively helped you with speaking more fluently and relaxed. . I thought I'd never recover, until a friend gave me a book that quite literally helped me recover from the panic disorder. For me, this was a lifechanging book. This makes me wonder if there are books that are deemed "highly valued" in this community, that helped people massively with their speech? Also, could you describe how it helped you?"* **What book helped to reduce stuttering?** Answer: [This](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A0tKkg0MnyRRnOP-JQGwx1IhREmfrnd8/view?usp=sharing) and [this](https://drive.google.com/file/d/19w2ytoperOcaD-0rhhoLipb6JRG7WAQ1/view?usp=sharing) ebook helped me reduce stuttering. **Could you describe how it helped you?** Answer: I used to perceive stuttering as something random with an unknown or hidden mechanism. The ebooks helped me in accepting the [stutter cycle](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/12mr71i/what_improves_your_stuttering_the_most/), letting go of unhelpful corrections (like secondary characteristics, avoidance-behaviors and panic responses) and reducing the meaning of triggers. Additionally, it helped me distinguish between fear (emotion), anticipation pressure on throat (body sensation), anticipatory thoughts (thoughts), not calm breathing (panic responses) and everything else that happens during a speech block. This then led to more control in decision-making to do helpful beliefs/attitudes and unlearn (or resist) unhelpful beliefs/attitudes. After all, how can one unlearn unhelpful behaviors or belief systems if he doesn't know how his subconscious thought patterns and behavioral processes work? Additionally, it led to greater insights about what I did wrong (which had resulted in a speech block) in order to make helpful corrections (as opposed to the unhelpful corrections that I apply on auto-pilot), and greater insights about the fact that I wasn't adopting certain fluency laws that non-stutterers use. Finally, instead of only applying one strategy, I learned many strategies to tackle the stutter cycle from different angles, such as: My strategy: * Changing unhelpful beliefs to helpful beliefs: * label anticipatory fear as 'being nervous of intention to say' * anticipation is not true * realize that speaking without a strategy (aka speaking on auto-pilot) = (equals) always panic breathing. Conclusion: So, always use this strategy (instead of avoiding its fluency laws) * don't care about speech errors or the past * step in the shoe of non-stutterers (e.g., listeners that I speak with) and visualize how they apply this strategy as well (since all steps in this strategy are essentially fluency laws) * act like a non-stutterer * never rely on any thought, feeling, experience or sensation in order to decide whether to hold back speech (such as halting respiratory, laryngeal or articulatory muscles) *(argument: because it's not a fluency law and it will only enable us to pay more attention to sensory feedback. Additionally, this helpful belief/attitudes makes depending on anticipatory fear pointless which may lead to acting how I want to feel. Normally, stuttering seems to be random because triggers are random, however, this could be compensated by replacing the 'control: triggers' with the 'control: focusing on intention, being nervous and breathing calmly'.)* * by speaking on the timing of my intention my goal is to increase as much anticipatory fear is possible *(argument: this helpful belief/attitude makes panic responses pointless. Recovery lies in the places and experiences you fear the most. Additionally, this makes the following unhelpful belief/attitude pointless: 'I hold back speech, because firstly I need to reduce anticipatory fear'. Additionally, by applying this helpful belief/attitude - I will be happy if I become nervous; I will feel sad if I didn't become nervous. Additionally, by applying this helpful belief/attitude, I will learn that me experiencing anticipatory fear is not dangerous and that I'm actually safe - which then leads to not fighting, blaming, trying to fix or avoid anticipatory fear anymore.)* * speak on the timing of my intention *(argument: because it's a fluency law, non-stutters also speak whenever they have the intention to say a word instead of waiting out speech. Additionally, the goal is to replace the unhelpful attitude 'waiting out speaking based off of anticipatory anxiety' with 'speaking on the timing of my intention')* * always observe and really feel this nervous feeling (without reducing it) *(argument: to aim for building tolerance, but even more important, to gain more control in decision-making to separate panic responses from anticipatory fear)* * while always breathing calmly *(argument: because I consider it as a fluency law, after all, if non-stutterers make a speech error then in general they don't do a panic attack whereby they stop breathing calmly)* * resist compulsions and rituals (e.g., resist: holding back speech, secondaries, avoidance-behaviors, coping mechanisms, overthinking, overreacting and panic responses) *(argument: to aim for unlearning 'learned behaviors')*