December 19, 2013

December 19, 2013

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

When he was a child, this writer used to go fishing with a telescope fishing rod that was made out of fiber glass. He was very proud to possess this fancy tool and always handled it with great care. After he had used it, he would pack it into a special long bag, which he would store into a protected space. The rod illustrates something about SVB. The thinnest piece, reaching across the water, comes out of another piece, which is thicker. This piece comes out of an even thicker piece, which comes out of the thickest piece, which you hold in your hands. Similarly in SVB everything that is said exactly and beautifully fits with what was said before, there is a connection between everything you say. In SVB we experience a cumulative fit.  

  

There is no link between what is said and what preceded it In NVB. Consequently, there is stagnation instead of growth. A tree cannot be made to grow. It grows by itself when the circumstances for growth are available. In NVB the circumstances for interaction are missing. We have died psychologically because we are used to NVB. We think SVB is for idealists, martyrs, revolutionaries, saints or other supposedly special human beings, but they never achieved it either. They are in the same boat as everybody else. Their way of talking is determined like yours, by how people have communicated with them. Being born with a golden spoon in one’s mouth couldn’t result into SVB any better than growing up under impoverished circumstances. The distinction between SVB and NVB wasn’t and hasn’t yet been made. Once it is made we will see the difference between when we have it and when we don’t. By that time, the difference no longer matters. Differentiation between what it is and isn’t only occurs when SVB isn’t possible. 

The distinction between SVB and NVB is of no importance once SVB is happening, once we are enhancing each other by how we interact. People who achieve SVB are always surprised and relieved to see many distinctions, which seemed so important during NVB, fall by the way side. We keep reiterating distinctions that perpetuate NVB. NVB is always strengthened by those, who are less willing or capable of making the distinction between SVB and NVB than we. As long as we ourselves can’t make the correct distinction, we too are tormented by it. We may be willing to make the distinction, but that doesn’t mean that we can. The feeling of uneasiness that goes with this, stops most people from exploring SVB. This awkward negative feeling is bound to continue as long as the distinction is not made correctly. What you get then is that certain people are supposedly depressed and that others are supposedly healthy. This is total nonsense, because in their way of communicating, they both still produce NVB, not SVB. 

An expert in SVB is needed. This author claims to be this expert. He does so reluctantly, because, on the one hand, he knows that SVB can’t be learned in any other way, but, on the other, he also knows that experts aren’t sufficient. The notion of an expert is determined by the fact that few people know about it. If SVB becomes popular, the idea of experts becomes irrelevant. Also, how this writer became an expert will not help others to become one. The development of their behaviors is rooted in a different reinforcement history than this author. The expertise of this author pertains to how SVB can help us to come to grips with our individual history of reinforcement. By looking at ourselves through the lens of how others have interacted with us, we can begin to understand our own behavior. This author understands his own behavior as determined by how others have interacted with him. He is only capable of having SVB with those who, like him, are persistent in finding out about the cause of their own behavior. Those who think they are causing their own behavior are incapable of learning anything about SVB. Even if they would read these words, it wouldn’t make any sense, because the task remains that they must learn to recognize their own NVB, while they speak. Even if the books we read are written by experts, writing or reading about it is not going to change the way in which we communicate.