November 20, 2015

November 20, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) the speaker experiences him or herself as a listener and the listener experiences him or herself simultaneously as a speaker. Since we are already familiar with high rates of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), we are used to the separation of the speaker from the listener. Consequently, only a few people, who are presumably experts or authorities, do most of the talking, while most of us, although we may also do some of the talking, remain mainly listeners. To increase the rates of SVB these listeners must become speakers. 

Instead of trying to stop NVB speakers, which makes any speaker into a NVB speaker, we need to avoid listening to NVB speakers and start listening to SVB speakers. As long as we keep engaging in NVB, we keep separating the speaker from the listener and we cannot achieve any kind of unity. In SVB we truly speak with one voice, which represents our well-being. When in SVB each speaker listens to him or herself, while he or she speaks, we stimulate each other’s wellbeing while we talk. In SVB we co-regulate each other, but in NVB we dis-regulate each other. Indeed in NVB, the speaker prevents the listener from becoming a speaker. In SVB, on the other hand, the speaker stimulates the speaker to become a speaker and the listener stimulates the speaker to become a listener. These are natural, audible and noticeable processes. 

It is often stated by so-called experts that there is a lack of listening, but that is not the problem. The problem is: there is too much listening and too little talking. We can only hear ourselves when we talk and we are not used to listening to ourselves while we speak as we don’t talk enough to be able to pay attention to this important phenomenon. Moreover, in most of our conversations we are not stimulated to listen to ourselves. Our best chance to listen to ourselves while we speak is when we are alone and take time to talk out loud. Only this convinces us it is possible and necessary to speak and listen simultaneously. We have already done it, but to increase our SVB with others we must first talk with ourselves. Our tendency to listen to others or to make others listen to us has kept us outward oriented, verbally fixated and struggling for attention. Most importantly, it has prevented us from speaking with the sound that makes us feel good. We can only hear that sound while we produce it.