May 2, 2014

May 2, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

This writing is purely for the fun of it. There is no need for me to focus my attention on anything in particular. My attention was focused on something for four days, I was responding to a paper that I had read, but now that this focus is no longer there, I experience a sense of relief. The experience I am having is made possible by the deprivation from this experience which accumulated during these four days. It is not anything world-shocking, but it is quite profound. A tension that was with me for four days is now gone. 

As I was making coffee, I thought of my family back in Holland. I haven’t had any contact with them for more than a year and my life has never been so good. Occasionally, I still have thoughts about contacting them, but when I think of how peaceful my life has become now that my family members are out of it, I resist my old tendency. I imagine that my mother is sad about not hearing from me. I assume that my father is displeased that I am letting my mother down. I think that my sisters still bear grudges against me and that my brothers aren’t the least interested in me. They are all going on with their lives and basically they have forgotten about me. 

I was talking the other day with a behaviorist friend and telling him how my life has changed in ways which are new to me. In the past I tried very hard to change, but I don’t try to change anymore. My behavior has come under discriminative control of my knowledge about behaviorism. Certain behaviors which I used to have are decreasing by themselves while others are increasing by themselves. I experience myself no longer as the doer of my actions, but am more aware about how the environment or the situation affects my behavior. Especially my anxiety is much less.

This free flow of language is something I always enjoyed. It reminds me of my younger brother with whom I shared a room throughout my childhood. We would sleep as kids in a double bed and we would have long conversations about nothing for hours on end. Sometimes we would be bored, obnoxious or funny. We would try to imagine things and come up with something new to amuse ourselves. Those are my happiest childhood memories. My parents often had to quiet us down, because we were getting so excited that it was keeping us awake at night. Also, if we got up early in the morning, there was always a lot of conversation going on between the two of us. This too was getting too loud and often our laughter and bantering around was punished.

It feels I am coming into my own because I am successful in my current two jobs as a psychology instructor and as a mental health worker. Both jobs require repertoires of my behavior which are well-developed. Also, my relationship with my wife is better these days and she is appreciative of me. We have lived in our comfortable home we bought at the end of 2013 and we are working together in our garden. We are planting vegetables and we have made friends with our neighbors and colleagues, which is very nice. It seems that we are both more capable of having our needs met and we are  keeping our eyes open as well for even better opportunities.

I was just looking at a lamp, which I choose and I remember how we deliberated with each other whether we should buy it or not. Seeing this lamp is reinforcing to me and making me aware of other things in our house which I find pleasant. For instance, we have the walls painted light blue in our living room and in our kitchen and we have a special kind of orange in the office, where I often spend time studying or doing my work for school. It feels so much better than the rental apartment. I feel fortunate to be in the position I am currently in and I appreciate the trouble it took to get us here.