Tips to improve stuttering (prioritize the defective programming or stutter program instead of reducing unhelpful triggers, reactions, senses, experiences etc)

Tips to improve stuttering (prioritize the defective programming or stutter program instead of reducing unhelpful triggers, reactions, senses, experiences etc) **Question**: what is your opinion? 20% of people that didn't outgrow stuttering, in my opinion, have experienced and will experience many periods of fluency in their lifetime, however, they likely won't allow the automatic process of the instinct to adjust to reinforcing the fluency pathways.  **Why?** In my opinion, it's not because of triggers (like anticipation or anxiety), but because of a condition: '*If I experience a trigger, reaction, secondary characteristic, sensory feedback etc (that gives me a strong enough impression of doubt of maintaining the forward flow or fear that listeners respond negatively or that stuttering might happen and might be a problem), then I reinforce the stutter pathways.*' That would explain why '*reducing anxiety*' or '*anticipation*' doesn't lead to outgrowing stuttering. Because we are then left with the IF-THEN conditional expression. In contrast, if we approach this if-then condition and don't do anymore what this *if-then expression* says, then PWS won't block anymore in my opinion. Do you think this concept makes any sense? Does it make sense to put more emphasis on this defective IF-THEN programming of the [speech plan](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/11fn406/poll_do_you_understand_this_one_of_the_most/) rather than tackling each trigger/reaction **The problem is our lack of ability to properly incorporate the feedback data into successful revisions** \--> People who Stutter (PWS) recognize an error, for example, if we tense speech muscles or excessively reinforce air pressure, then we evaluate the outcome of speech as a glottal stop, and then we want to prevent this by canceling and reformulating the speech plan, e.g., in order to move speech muscles, we cancel the speech plan and instead we try to reduce 'fear' (unhelpful revision). In my opinion, a more helpful revision is to reduce 'fear' without canceling the speech plan, or rather **to speak with anxiety regardless** and still focus on maintaining the forward flow (e.g., focusing on prosody or rhythm). Another helpful revision, is to stop doing the IF-THEN conditional statement '*If I experience an unhelpful trigger, reaction, sensory feedback etc, then I stop focusing on maintaining the forward flow*'. \--> Another example where we recognize an error is: we anticipate that stuttering might happen and that stuttering might be a problem. An unhelpful revision is, that, in order to move our speech muscles we first cancel the speech plan and then we are trying to reduce or change the anticipation. However, we have done '**learned anticipation behavior**' for decades so we cannot directly expect to reduce these anticipatory triggers and there lies the problem. By still trying to reduce anticipation, we will always maintain the unhelpful IF-THEN conditional expression (*otherwise we would have already outgrown stuttering in my opinion*) \--> Another example where we recognize an error is that, if we overuse our senses - for example, we hear our stutter voice or we feel our speech muscles during a block (*giving us the impression that the tongue is stuck on this feared letter*), then we are trying to move our speech muscles by canceling the speech plan and waiting out the senses until we don't sense a block anymore and only then we allow ourselves to focus on maintaining the forward flow (*unhelpful revision*).  **Conclusion**: We should not stop overusing our senses. My argument is, that even if we stop experiencing sensory feedback, then it will still maintain our IF-THEN condition and as long as we allow this impaired IF-THEN stutter program to run, we will always function as a chronic stutterer in my opinion, and we will then not be able to voluntarily [decide](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/11fn406/poll_do_you_understand_this_one_of_the_most/) to move speech muscles during a block.