December 16, 2013

December 16, 2013

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is a way of communicating, which is absolutely possible, but which we keep missing. It feels great to have SVB and yet we do not allow ourselves or each other to feel great when we talk with one another. We do the exact opposite: we make ourselves and each other feel terrible. Because we keep doing that we produce Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). We are so used to it that we do not notice that NVB makes us feel the way we do. When there is a moment of SVB, we stop our NVB, have a little breather, but then we go right back to NVB, completely ignoring the experience we had with SVB. No matter how brief, the experience was there. To have and maintain our sanity, the SVB experience has to be there. 

All sorts of explanations can be given as to why we keep producing NVB, but none of that produces SVB. To have SVB, NVB must stop. This is only going to happen when we experience more SVB. Our ability to stop NVB improves by having more SVB. The goal of this writing is to create more SVB. The goal is not to stop NVB. This process is best compared to parents, who reinforce appropriate behaviors, but ignore, as much as possible, a child’s inappropriate behaviors. In SVB our focus is on building desirable behaviors. 

We waste our time and energy by talking about what we don’t want. Every time we talk about what we don’t like and why we don’t like it, we produce NVB. Talking about aversive stimuli produces NVB. Talking about enriching, reinforcing stimuli produces SVB. It is as simple as that. When we don’t perceive noxious stimuli, there is no need to talk about them, but the moment we perceive them, we are going to talk about them, we need to talk about them, whether we know it or not, admit it or not, or are aware of it or not. Noticing aversive stimuli doesn’t require conscious awareness. We have an innate ability to detect danger in our environment. The moment this mechanism is activated, we are no longer capable of having SVB. 

Our need to communicate in order to survive danger is a biological matter. The sound of our voice and the sensations we experience within our body tell us if we feel safe or not. These nonverbal cues can make verbal communications impossible and unnecessary. Our verbal expressions only make sense in a state of well-being. When, due to a threat, a fight-flight-freeze response is triggered, we can’t produce SVB and are only capable of producing NVB. We don’t sound good, because we don’t feel good. We sound fearful, because we are full of fear. We sound tense and anxious, because we our experience is tense and anxious. Although we may not have consciously noticed it, we have perceived aversive stimuli. Some people say that they have a gut feeling that something is wrong, but the reality is: they feel threatened. There would be no fear response, there cannot be a fear response, if there is no stimulus eliciting it. Whether we are dealing with a perceived or a real threat is not the question. In both cases there is our fear response.

Our emphasis on the arbitrary distinction between an imagined threat and a real threat blinds us to the reality that both are still perceived as aversive, and, therefore, can trigger the same alarm reaction. This is especially true for our spoken communication. NVB, in one way or another, is always involving the proximity of an aversive stimulus. We can identify this stimulus by paying attention to what is asking and demanding our attention. We can give words to whatever asks our attention. By listening to the sound of our own words, we become aware of whether what we describe is aversive or reinforcing to us. 

When our experience is aversive,, we notice this by how we sound. Once we are aware of the NVB that this produces, we produce SVB again, because we now describe and accept our negative emotions. SVB occurs when in our spoken communication we detect our negative emotion, which undermines our interaction. By going back and forth between SVB and NVB, we create more SVB, but once the distinction has been made, we must maintain the environment in which SVB can be continued and NVB be decreased to a minimum. After the discovery of the medicine our goal must became to prevent disease. 

Prevention of NVB is different from decreasing it. As long as we are trying to be kind and doing the best we can, we may think things will be improving, but they are not. The decrease of NVB does not matter much. It is possible to create a setting in which SVB can continue, but such an experiment is meaningless when it comes to prevention. It is a good exercise in finding out what is needed, but it is not going to result in prevention. Likewise, prevention of a disease is not going to occur because we have discovered a medicine. It will occur only once if this medicine is given by those who have it to those who need it.

A momentary decrease of NVB will again and again be followed by its resurgence. There have been many times, during, but especially after wars, in which human beings have dreamed and talked about different ways of interacting, but none of our treaties have created lasting peace. It is ridiculous that we continue to talk about the Middle East Peace Process. Politicians model to citizens across the world how to have NVB. SVB is world-peace in a nutshell. It is time to retire outdated constructs. We are not after one feel-good session of SVB, we are thinking about disseminating SVB so that NVB can be prevented.

We keep trying to re-invent the wheel, but we need to stop doing that.

SVB is nothing new. Once we have it, we know that we have it, we know that we have had it and that we can have it and should have it. We need to be reinforced for what we already know and have known for so long. The fact, which does not go away, is that we don't know what we know. Just because our stupid way of communicating is not up to par with what we know, doesn’t mean that we don’t know, or can continue to live in our cocoon of blissful ignorance. To the contrary, we are tormented and haunted by what we know and what we can’t seem to forget. NVB will never satisfy us and always leave us doubtful about what we have missed while we insisted on continuing our misery.  We can’t be happy about the replacement of genuine communication. Although we can recognize SVB, we do not know it. We do not know SVB. We know NVB, but mistake it for SVB. We are conditioned by NVB. SVB is lacking in our lives, because we keep NVB going. 

The repetitive character of this writing may strike many readers as overdone. This writer, however, knows that before SVB will begin to sink in, it needs to be repeated many, many times. It will not stick by reading about it once or twice. It is not going to stabilize by you having only one SVB conversation. You need to have many SVB conversations before you will begin to see a difference. If you want quick results, SVB is not for you. NVB will give you quick results, but SVB takes a lot of time. This writer has had thousands of SVB conversations and he knows how much work it takes, before it can begin to have its own momentum. SVB does not come cheap and it requires work. One does not get paid money for the work one does on SVB. 

There are two problems, which remain, even once we acknowledge that there is such a thing as SVB or authentic human interaction.  The first problem is that we just can’t stand the idea that we don’t know how to communicate and that we are most of the time pretentious.  This is such a big deal, that we rather endlessly go on with our NVB than that we admit that we really don’t know how to communicate. The second problem is that to learn SVB, we have to listen to and work with an expert. This expert is not a guru, mystic, master, visionary, or some exceptional, super-smart individual, but an ordinary human being, who, due to his history of reinforcement, was lucky enough to go on with something that anyone else in his situation could have gone on with, but which nobody has explored. This writer has not met anyone, who explored the possibility of ongoing spoken communication, SVB, in which communicators become more connected with each other and with themselves, in which people understand each other and listen to each other, in which the communicators say things which they have never said before, in which people acknowledge that the possibility to communicate like that only exists under specific circumstances. Due to his past experience and research this writer became an authority on SVB. That is for most people extremely annoying. People usually want approval for their NVB and want to argue that it is SVB, but once they speak with this writer, they can no longer go on with that.