March 9, 2015

March 9, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer acknowledges the great difference between thinking about something and saying what one is thinking about out loud. He found that when he gives himself the chance to express his thoughts, thinking is not bothering him, but if he keeps thinking what he is thinking without saying it, eventually his thoughts become burdensome for him. So, there is a qualitative difference between the thoughts that are only thought and those which get to be expressed. Often, when he expresses to himself what he thinks, listening to himself while he speaks ‘his mind’, immediately alleviates the heaviness he was feeling while having these thoughts. It is remarkable this has such automatically reinforcing effect. He has gotten so used to this that his life has been shaped by the consequences of this. He can always say to himself what is going on, but other people, who don’t know about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), wouldn’t be able to handle it. 

Our commonly shared Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is based on the fallacy that we cannot and should not even say to ourselves what we think and feel. We have come to believe this utter nonsense because of the way in which we talk with each other. As long as we can’t say to each other what we think, we end up having private speech in which we can’t say to ourselves what we think. The fact, however, remains that we can and should say to each other what we think and that we can and should say to ourselves what we think. It became clear to this writer, that even when others are given permission to talk freely about whatever they think, they are only able to do this to the extent that they are stimulated to listen to their sound while they speak. Only SVB gives us a sense of control over our thoughts, that is, only during SVB do our thoughts become calm and coherent. In NVB, on the other hand, we are controlled by our thoughts which are the products of threatening and hostile environments.