June 29, 2014

June 29, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

When this writer has Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) by himself, he speaks out loud and listens to himself, while he speaks. When he has SVB with others, others do exactly the same: they listen to themselves, while they speak together with this writer.  During SVB, all the speakers listen to themselves, while they speak.  They do this because they enjoy how they sound. They enjoy how they sound, because they enjoy of how they feel. They feel very good within their own skin, because of how they sound. Their sound is the proof to them that they feel safe, supported, happy and trusting with each other. They know, they wouldn’t and couldn’t sound this way if they felt threatened, neglected, rejected, sad and suspicious.  These negative emotional experiences produce a different kind of sound. Moreover, in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), they would have very different proprioceptive experiences; their bodies would feel uncomfortable.  It is always in hindsight one knows one was having NVB; by the time one knows that one was having NVB, one is already having SVB again, because the sound of one’s voice has changed. 

In SVB these are the things that happen with the speaker.  The speaker speaks and listens to him or herself. Simultaneously, the speaker experiences his or her own sound with his or her body. This physiological experience makes the speaker an embodied speaker. His or her sound is produced by the instrument of sound: his or her body. Our sound depends on the shape and the condition of our body. Under different circumstances we sound differently, because we feel differently. If we listen to how we sound, we tap into how we feel. 

In NVB we don’t listen to the sound of our negative emotions. By experimentation we can find that self-listening, which makes other-listening possible, does not occur in NVB. In NVB, our other-listening excludes our self-listening.  In NVB other-listening prevents self-listening and this in turn prevents other-listening. In NVB we listen differently to others then when we listen to ourselves.  Yet, in NVB, we neither listen to ourselves nor to each other. 

The listener who experiences SVB is able to hear and understand what the speaker says without any effort. Effortlessness is the main characteristic of SVB, whereas NVB involves effort, forcefulness and a loss of energy. Listening to someone’s SVB is energizing, because we are listening to positive emotions which stimulate and resonate with our own positive emotions. Listening to NVB, we tap into our negative emotions. Since the listener’s public speech is positively impacted in SVB, since the relationship between the listener and the speaker in SVB is authentic, equal and ongoing, the willingness to listen in SVB is voluntary. In NVB, by contrast, listening is coerced, because there is inequality between the speaker and the listener. In NVB, the listener is lower, not as important or less powerful than the speaker. Because SVB public speech is reinforcing, the listener doesn’t experience any negative private speech which distracts from what the speaker is saying.  Such distractions occur only during NVB.  

The listener in NVB pretends to listen to the speaker and does what he or she is told, not because he or she wants to, but because he or she feels that he or she has to, because he or she is forced by the speaker. The listener in NVB is constantly made afraid for the consequences of not listening to the speaker. Thus, we are NOT listening in most of our communication, we are incapable of listening in most of our communication, which is NVB, because we are afraid of punitive consequences. This fear of listening is an important topic about which I shall later write more.

It seems to me that we are more afraid of what we fear we might lose than of what we can loose. In other words, much of our fear is imaginary.  We fear rejection, loss of relationship and opportunity, but unless we achieve SVB, we don’t realize that NVB will continue to exploit us for something it can't even deliver. NVB keeps us on our tows, but it never results in happy and healthy relationship, because it forces us to do things; the speaker coerces the listener.  Although most of us think that this is just an inevitable fact of life, we keep missing out on SVB, because we imitate how others speak. On the whole, the listener in NVB doesn’t get to speak that much, but if he or she does, he or she is bound to do so in a NVB fashion, that is, he or she will also make others listen to him or her. In NVB, listeners even make themselves listen, and they even force themselves to speak.