December 15, 2013

December 15, 2013 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

There are people who affect us negatively. No matter how much we try to change this, it will happen again. Our effort to get along with them is a waste of time. They don’t and can’t care about us and we must learn not to get involved with them. Their effect on us must be prevented. We need to avoid them. By ignoring them they lose their influence. Then they will notice this and do something to attract our attention. They always ask, but they can’t give attention. Since they can’t give it, they demand it by pretending to be giving it, to us.

No matter how much attention we give, those who demand it can’t receive it. They only want more as long as we keep giving it to them. They may be more polite or more patient than us, but they trick us into doing things their way. Their tricks, to get our attention, always play into our weakness, which is still there, because, like them, we did not get the attention we needed. Our need for attention makes us vulnerable to those who are good at pretending that they give us their attention. But, by pretending to give attention, they ask our attention.

There is a way of being honest about our need for attention. If there was no such way, there would be no way out. Our lack of attention is very common and the way in which people deal with it leads to all sorts of problems. This writer believes this particularly affects how we talk.  Our lack of attention makes us into unconscious communicators. If we knew the difference between conscious and unconscious conversation,  between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), we would be able to get and make available the attention, which we need and which was missing. 

Based on our history of reinforcement, we choose a profession. We veer toward a profession that is most likely to produce the particular kind of attention which was missing while we grew up. Those who experienced neglect or abandonment are attracted to the mental health professions. There they meet in what can be described as a nightmarish kind of support group, which is really an undermine group. What often goes  unnoticed, is that the patients support the mental health professionals, instead of the other way around. The worst problems are not with those who are diagnosed as mentally ill, but with those, who supposedly help them. We are the only ones who are being helped, because we know how to help ourselves. We have our job and we keep it no matter what.   

Those, who are so good at giving their attention to others, are in the business of taking it. We get paid for giving attention, but what we do in reality is making and keeping the patient sick, because we benefit from that. No matter how much compassion we fake, we reinforce the  problem behavior and our own mental-health-provider-identity. We know how to conduct ourselves in a professional manner and we are at ease with creating and maintaining one-directional interaction with our clients. We make it seem as if interaction is bi-directional, but we are not the least interested in that, because we are the ones who possess the pricy solution for others. We are special and presumably capable.

   

Since what we’ve got is expensive, we believe that it must have value and so we keep producing more NVB. Both the mental health patient and the student of psychology suffer because they think it is worth it and they are getting a good deal. Psychology students long for the moment they will be the ones to decide what is right and wrong. Once they have their license they can have their own practice. Patients buy into what is presented as the recovery model. They believe it will make them better, but requires them act like patients, who let the thinking be done for them by those who come up with these great ideas. They are presumably working towards developing better coping skills, autonomy, confidence and independence, but they don’t achieve this. Like any other obsessive consumers, they never get to the point of real satisfaction with what they have bought. Supply and demand, which turns SVB into something which can be bought and sold, has distorted all human interaction. However, SVB is not a commodity and our mental health can not be improved by NVB.