March 14, 2014

March 14, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Another reason I began to listen to myself more and more was that I talked about the need to listen to ourselves while we speak with others. I had to admit  again and again that even though I talked about it, I was often not listening to myself. In spite of that, I began to listen to myself more and more. Often I only found out later, not during the conversation, that I must not have listened to myself. How the conversation went demonstrated whether I had been listening to myself or not. Every time I was having a negative experience in conversation with others, it was because I had stopped listening to myself. It puzzled me that this was the case. Like everyone else, I believed I should be able to keep listening to myself if I decided to do so, but apparently this was not the case.

It can be said that I still have a problem with listening to myself while I speak. Even today I stop listening to myself. I am more at ease with it now, but was very upset about it in the past. I was often enraged about the fact that I was unable to listen to myself. Other thought of me as a complete idiot, because I couldn't do what I preached. Frustration still flairs up in a situation in which it is impossible  to listen to myself. I know that such situations exist and I know I don’t create them. If it was up to me, I would create the circumstances in which everyone would be able to listen to themselves while they speak. I have done that as often as could and will continue to do this. I have come to understand  that under circumstances in which it is impossible to talk about listening to one self while one speaks, it is impossible to listen to oneself while one speaks! We must talk about listening to ourselves while we speak in order to be able to listen to ourselves while we speak. It took me years to find that out and I don’t claim to have known this from the start. I knew it implicitly, not explicitly. Only now in this writing I am able to articulate it, but I wasn’t capable of saying in the past: there are situations in which I can’t listen to myself while I speak. To expect myself to be able to do it was utterly self-defeating and frustrating. 

I have suffered while finding out that it was not up to me to speak in the way which I like best. Because I have always been willing to admit what was going on with me, I was more capable of describing that than most others. I recognize that this is the fate of everyone who develops this skill. Let it be said again: nobody can listen to themselves regardless of the circumstances. The belief that this is possible is false. This is not to say that we don’t have a need to talk in a way which pleases us and fits with us, we do, but we can only achieve it when others agree to have it with us. We can’t decide on our own for others to have it. We also can’t decide as a group, who supposedly believe the same thing that others must listen to themselves while they speak. It just doesn’t work that way. 

Others will only listen to themselves while they speak if the circumstances are such that it becomes possible for them to listen to themselves while they speak. The creation and the maintenance of these circumstances can only be done by someone who knows what it takes to listen to one self while one speaks. The notion that we all individually need different circumstances to achieve this is wrong. The circumstances in which we are stimulated to listen to ourselves while we speak are exactly the same for everyone. This is why we can recognize in each other when listen to ourselves while we speak. We can all hear in each other if others listen to themselves while they speak or not. 

To the extent that we hear ourselves while we speak, we hear whether others listen to themselves while they speak. Our other-listening is only as accurate as our self-listening. When other-listening becomes problematic this signifies that our self-listening isn’t happening. We misunderstand each other because we misunderstand ourselves and we understand each other only to the extent that we understand ourselves. When we begin to listen to ourselves while we speak, we begin to understand ourselves and as a consequence we begin to be able to understand each other. Although we can of course listen to others, we can’t do their self-listening. Self-listening, like breathing, has to be done individually. Self-listening only makes sense if one speaks, so self-listening sets the stage for everyone to become a speaker. When we listen to ourselves while we speak, we realize that we are simultaneously the speaker and the listener. 

The realization that we simultaneously speak and listen makes us better speakers. We have emphasized listening to others way too much. That is why we don’t listen to ourselves. We have to speak to be able to listen to ourselves. There are too many listeners in the world and too few speakers. When people begin to speak more there is more opportunity to listen to ourselves while we speak, but when we speak less, there is less opportunity to listen to ourselves. This also causes our private speech to be disconnected from our public speech. As private speech becomes more and more separate from public speech, it become more and more out of touch with reality, less real and more problematic. 

We tend to think that we don’t understand each other because we don’t listen well enough to each other, but that is not the problem. The problem is we don’t listen to ourselves. We want others to listen to us because we don’t listen to ourselves. Once we listen to ourselves, we can stimulate others to listen to themselves. We achieve a new way of communicating once we listen to ourselves while we speak and once others are listening to themselves while they speak. Central to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is that we listen to ourselves while we speak. This is made possible by identifying and preventing Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The process in which this can occur requires the exploration of the link between our private and our public speech. 

The absence of the stimuli that make NVB possible signifies the presence of the stimuli that make SVB possible. This needs to be talked about. It can’t be achieved by reading or writing. SVB involves the acceptance and re-introduction of private speech into public speech. In NVB our private speech is excluded from our public speech. When our private speech is excluded from our public speech, even when we speak, the speaker is not really speaking. Since we are so used to this, we don’t realize anymore that although we may be speaking all the time, we are in fact not speaking at all. Once we acknowledge the difference between SVB and NVB, we know that most of our speech isn’t really speech at all because it leaves out and it disconnects from our private speech, from what we really think and feel. That we have accepted as normal a way of communicating in which our private speech is constantly excluded and dissociated from our public speech signifies the pervasiveness of our mental health problems.