December 22, 2013

December 22, 2013

Dear Reader, 

 

Only you, my dear reader, can feel what your body feels. This underestimated, undervalued, subjective experience brings you to the communication in which your reality can be articulated more accurately. If you feel threatened or anguished, you should move your body to another circumstance. This is easier said than done in a communication from which you can’t escape. The way to deal with NVB is to avoid it as much as possible. If you can do that, you do yourself a big favor. This author does not regret he has done this. By doing so he found that his life has become much easier. Removing yourself from a situation can be done in more than one way. If you can’t physically leave, you must leave mentally. You will be blamed for this, but don’t start blaming yourself. We are naturally inclined to not listen to those who aversively affect us. There is nothing wrong with that. What we call distraction for the most part is caused by what is perceived as threatening. 

Emotional distancing is another way of removing yourself from NVB. Don’t express any emotion under circumstances in which NVB is perceived. Fake the expression of emotion if you must, but don’t tell those involved in NVB what you really feel. Avoid having feelings by not expressing your feelings. Once the coast is clear, you can have SVB again with those who will not take advantage of your emotional openness. NVB demands emotional openness. In SVB nobody demands anything. We are emotionally open in SVB, because we reciprocate each other’s sensitivity. In NVB our sensitivity is constantly abused. There is nothing to be achieved by confrontation. To the contrary, confrontation will only make things worse. Only by removing yourself can your communication be improved.

Just avoiding NVB may sound drastic, but it is the only thing that will allow you to move to SVB. That is what you need to do. By moving there physically, mentally or emotionally, you will be more secure. There is nothing to be gained by hoping that something will happen for the better. It won’t because it can’t. If it could, it would already have happened. SVB didn’t happen because it couldn’t happen. There is no use in complaining or protesting. When SVB is possible, there is no need to have someone explain that. It is totally self-evident when it is possible. 

One of the main reasons that we don’t have SVB, is because we keep on thinking that we are already having it. Our way of communicating is incredibly stupid.  Even when it is clear that we are suffering, that we are upset, troubled and not happy at all, we insist that there is nothing wrong with our way of interacting. If someone says the obvious, that we are not communicating at all, this person risks his or her life. We are so full of ourselves that there can’t possibly be something wrong with how we speak. Our grandiosity and out need for admiration is such that no one is allowed to make the slightest comment about how we behave verbally. Supposedly, we are the kindest, the most understanding, the most accepting, the most moral, the most truthful, the most intelligent, the most capable and the most sane. These are claims made by people who don’t know that they are engaged in NVB. It is not a matter of blaming them, but a matter of recognizing and avoiding them. If you can’t recognize them, you can’t avoid them. You were not avoiding them because you were not yet recognizing them. Once you recognize them, avoiding them is the only thing to do. The idea that you have some other options than avoiding NVB, indicates that you are not aware of what you are dealing with. What goes on in the name of human interaction is pure violence. 

For many years this author was unable to turn away from the communication in which he again and again felt violated. He believed  he would eventually find out about the right way of communicating. Nothing could have prepared him for the anti-climactic consequences of SVB. Although he had practiced and taught SVB for many years, he still got in trouble multiple times because he tried to change people. His habit of wanting to be accepted brought him to others with whom he got into some kind of conflict. He became sick and tired of himself and decided not to get into these negative situations anymore, because they didn’t get him anywhere.

It is still an enigma to him how he is now able to avoid problems which he used to have so often in the past. Frequently, he notices that other people have problems which he himself used to have. It is only in this fashion that he remembers  it was just yesterday that he used to be full of problems. He had completely given up hope that his problems would change one day and used to feel really sad, lonely and misunderstood. All that, however, has changed due to SVB. It changed, but not in the way he thought it would. He thought he would have SVB with others more often, but this turned out to not be the case. Also, to his own surprise, his need for SVB decreased to the point that it no longer seemed to exist. That spoken communication would shed new light on his private speech, his self-talk, was nothing he had foreseen or wanted to happen. His thoughts and feelings seemed to have a live of their own. He knew  that his private speech was a function of public speech and had been troubled by the fact that his public speech required the constant sanitization from anything personal. He had wanted to talk about his private speech, but was given the message that that was not allowed in public speech. After many objections and rejections, he finally gave in.