December 23, 2013

December 23, 2013   

  Written by M. Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

As you must have noticed, this writer has been writing for the last couple of days in a new letter type. It is to him as if he is speaking in a different tone. In the meantime, he and his wife have moved from their rental apartment to a wonderful two bedroom house. The place looks beautiful and now that the curtains have been hung and most of their belongings have been unpacked, they feel at the starting point of a new phase of their lives. They are very happy with their new surroundings and they were welcomed by the neighbors of the peaceful street in which they now live.

The writer has often spoken about the change in the environment which affect the way we speak. Simply said, by changing the tone of our voice, we embark on an entirely different way of communicating than the one we have known. In our usual way of communicating we speak with a voice which is, although we produce it, not really our own. Our sound signifies how we disconnected from ourselves. Of course, it is impossible to communicate effectively with such a sound. The sound which disconnects us from ourselves is bound to disconnect us from others as well. 

In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), our voices grab, stab, push, pull, punch and choke, but in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), our voices caress, embrace, let go, invite, energize and make us conscious. In SVB we sound good, melodious, calm, attentive and resonant, but in NVB, we sound terrible, harsh, hateful, tense and constrained. Complications arise when we produce content, which is congruent or incongruent with how we sound. When we can get away with it, because we have power over others, when others depend on us, we sound any way we like, but we end up talking so to speak out of our ass, when we only like to hear ourselves talk.  

The point of SVB is not that we all try to change the way in which we sound, but rather that we become aware of how we sound. Once we do that a whole bunch of positive processes will happen by themselves. Regardless of how we sound, of how we  feel or what kind of experiences we have, the production of our voice happens in the here and now. According to this writer, listening to our sound makes us and keeps us conscious. Listening and producing sound are two activities that both take place in the here and now. If we do both, we attain conscious communication and if we fail to do this, we have mechanical, unconscious communication. In the latter, we are imprisoned by unconscious, repetitive patterns of behavior, which are, of course, pathological; in the former, we experience self-evident enhancements that happen because we can be  open, spontaneous, free, full of energy, flexible and flowing. 

The author asks the reader to give up on predetermined communication. The reader must not make any attempt to sound a particular way. These words can be used by the reader to read out loud and to get an example of what the author talks about. The reader can read these words and hear his or her own sound, as it is. By connecting with their own sound, readers find that what the author speaks about makes total sense. Refusal to do this leads to the opposite result. We can all speak with the sound which represents our well-being, but we will only be inclined to do so if we listen to our voice while we speak. As  self-listening, which involves private speech that connects us with ourselves, depends on others in the same way that we depend others in public speech, we need someone to tell us to listen to ourselves or otherwise we will not do it. As we depend on each other for our private and public speech, we will only keep listening to ourselves and be able to enjoy SVB as long as we keep sharing it with others.   

The biggest change which can occur while we communicate is the change in our tone of voice. This is an environmental change, which directly affects our own behavior as well as the behavior of others. Such affects are, however, are only observable when we deliberately look for them. When we make it seem as if these effects don’t exist or matter, we force ourselves and each other into rigid conformity. We adhere to the, until now, unwritten rule, which says that we should not pay any attention to how someone behaves non-verbally. By making this rule explicit, readers can come to terms with the fact that they are, whether they know it or not, determined by it.