>How do I not **overthink** it and remain confident? Many different therapies have many different answers: * Some speech therapies advocate focusing on calm breathing to reduce **overthinking** * CBT recommends to use affirmation like "I can do it, I'm worth it, I view the best of myself" to change **overthinking** * CBT also recommends changing negative thought patterns like "**overthinking** and evaluating negative responses of the listener" (as you mentioned) to positive ones like "Everyone actually wants the best for me, they don't have enough knowledge about stuttering but they are still trying the best they can". This falls under positive self-talk * Mindfulness recommends **not** to stop or reduce this **overthinking** (so it's different from CBT). Mindfulness instead advocates to acknowledge these negative **overthinking**/emotions and keep them in your mind and body to become tolerant and learn to not 'react'to them. * Exposure Response Prevention recommends to accept negative **overthinking** without reducing it. Be aware of your negative thinking/emotions and watch at it from a distance (eg helicopter view) and apply inhibitory learning (like learning that **overthinking** is not a problem). The more you don't do a compulsion while overthinking (while observing negative emotions), the more your instinct learns that you **can** do it which disconfirms expectancy so the next time you speak, you view/expect less 'problems'. Eventually this reduces **overthinking**, but again, in mindfulness and ERP it's not about directly reducing overthinking (it's more of a consequence than an intervention) * Neuro-semantics recommends to create a stutter mental state where you visualize yourself overthinking and create a fluency mental state where you visualize yourself in the best way possible where you can freely speak without holding back. Neuro-semantics practices 1. if you are doing the overthinking then visualize your stutter movie in your mind 2. then look behind the movie and find the 'resources' (eg confidence) and background-foreground them in order to replace it with **overthinking** * Acceptance and commitment Therapy practices defusion strategies to detangle 'overthinking'. The goal is to see thoughts/emotions - whenever overthinking - as what they are, not as what they say they are. I highly recommend this, it's very effective towards **overthinking** so read these [exercises](https://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/defusion-techniques/) and these [exercises](https://www.sydney.edu.au/content/dam/students/documents/counselling-and-mental-health-support/cognitive-defusion.pdf).