December 2, 2014

December 2, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

The person who knows about the SVB/NVB distinction ccan become the treatment for the person who doesn’t know it and who mainly expresses NVB, the problem behavior. The person who has more history with making this distinction can support those who have not or who have seldom made this distinction. It may cause more problems than it solves, when the distinction can only sometimes be made or can only accidentally be made. Under such circumstances there is a shifting allegiance between SVB and NVB, which is very confusing, since NVB is more reinforced than SVB. Only when the SVB/NVB distinction is made will SVB be reinforced in such a way that it doesn’t cause any trouble, which is, the response rate for SVB increases and the response rate for NVB decreases. 

 

Any kind of physiological discomfort such as pain or a headache has an effect on how we sound while we speak. The person who feels sick usually sounds sick and the person who is in pain usually sounds like he or she is in pain. NVB always signifies physiological, subjective discomfort, while SVB is absence or subsidence of such discomfort. SVB is healing. We can talk about our pain in a SVB manner, but we haven’t done very much of that. We have mainly talked about our pain in a NVB manner. We must learn to share our pain to be able to talk about our physiological discomforts in a SVB fashion. SVB creates this situation in which we can share our pain, but during NVB, we can only talk about pain in a non-shared, attention-seeking, coercive manner.

Cause and effect statements can be made when the teacher, who knows the SVB/NVB distinction, teaches the student, who doesn’t know about this distinction or who has doubts about it. One moment the student has NVB and the next moment he or she has SVB. Consistent positive reinforcement of SVB as SVB and NVB as NVB by the teacher, by someone who knows what he or she is talking about, allows the student to make increasingly accurate SVB expressions by him or herself. The teacher makes it possible for the student to develop SVB. He or she engineers the environment in which SBV happens and validates what the student discovers. Even when there are many students, it would still be about each individual student, who in the presence of others discovers the SVB/NVB distinction. The teacher and the whole group of students reinforce SVB as SVB and NVB as NVB.

What causes SVB and NVB? We can’t see colors if there is no light. Likewise, we can’t detect the SVB/NVB distinction without having SVB. The continuation of NVB prevents us from detecting this distinction. NVB goes on automatically and we only find out about it once it has stopped. In SVB, we become aware that we were unconsciously involved in NVB, which prevented us from making the SVB/NVB distinction. We must be conscious to make this distinction. Consciousness is not, as we have believed, about being quiet or about not speaking, but it is about speaking in a SVB manner. We are conscious because of SVB and we were unconscious  due to our NVB. It is very important that we understand and acknowledge that one way of communicating, SVB, makes and keeps us conscious, while another way of communicating, NVB, makes us and keeps us unconscious. 

It is a well-documented fact that problem behaviors in autism increase when there is anxiety or pain. This author thinks of the link between this well-supported finding and the fact that when people are feeling good, they naturally produce SVB. SVB becomes effortlessly possible when the organism, autistic or not, experiences homeostasis. The moment this balance between internal and external stimulation is disturbed, as it would be, in the case of a headache or an anxiety-provoking pressure, the person will reliably produce NVB. In other words, NVB signifies homeostatic disturbance, while SVB characterizes our homeostatic equilibrium.

On the radio, someone said “It sounded good and I liked what he said.” This statement illustrates that what ‘sounded good’ to the mediator is a function of what the verbalizer said to the mediator. Only what has meaning for the mediator was sounding good. SVB has meaning for the mediator, because it addresses and enhances his or her relaxation, well-being and security. We agree on meaning only to the extent that we can feel safe and at ease. Without the SVB/NVB distinction, we assume that only some of us are in need of safety, stability and continuity, but once the distinction is made, we find that we are more similar to each other than we thought.