December 20, 2013

December 20, 2013

Dear Reader, 

 

Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is a forced way of communicating. NVB is so draining, because it prevents us from experiencing the reality. One way of describing NVB is that is makes us emphasize the verbal to the point that we reject the nonverbal. Verbal fixation causes disembodied communication. Thus, we don’t have any sense of our body during NVB. When this occurs, however, our body gets tense and lets us know we are doing something wrong. In NVB, our voice signals continuously that there is something wrong. Our sound is produced by our body and by paying attention to it we can effortlessly embody our communication again. Said differently, in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), there is congruence between verbal and nonverbal expressions. In SVB, what we say, the verbal, is connected with and supported by how we say it, the nonverbal. 

In NVB the verbal is considered to be more important than the nonverbal. This emphasis is based on a misunderstanding. In the development of language of the individual, it is obvious that we are all born nonverbal and that our ability to use language evolved out of the nonverbal. The verbal is emerging from the nonverbal. Every human being starts out nonverbal and then becomes verbal. Not so obvious, however, but perhaps even more important, is that in the evolution of our species, eons of time have gone by during which human beings existed without language. It is it therefore basically our biology which determines how we respond to language. Physiological changes produced by human interaction are caused by our nonverbal behavior. We like to believe that we are so verbal, but we are much more nonverbal than we are willing to admit. Denial of our human nature is inherent in how we speak.