November 29, 2015

November 29, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

Once you experience and understand the great difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), you know these two different response classes are maintained by very different environments. However, when I say environments, I mean people with different behavioral histories. Those who have more SVB than NVB have entirely different behavioral histories than those who keep having more NVB than SVB. Moreover, those who have increasingly more SVB don’t and can’t talk with those who have increasingly more NVB. Thus, when SVB increases, things happen by themselves rather than presumably by you. This is a great relief which cannot be compared to anything you already know. It is new and, remarkably, this newness remains.

Any attempt on your part to achieve SVB with someone who is more inclined towards NVB is based on your misunderstanding of SVB and NVB. Your wanting to have more SVB is based on your ignorance about how it really works. In NVB people believe they cause their own behavior, but in SVB we finally overcome this long-held, silly belief. If you still try to have SVB by yourself, as I have suggested, you will find that you will only have it when you give up trying to have it. Your failure to accurately assess others is directly related to your inability to appreciate the fact that SVB with yourself is of course also not caused by you. Whenever you revert back again to this false explanation that your behavior is caused by you, you will have NVB by yourself.

Whether you talk with yourself and listen to yourself while you speak or whether you talk with others, both circumstances either set the stage for SVB or NVB. It doesn’t matter whether you talk with yourself or with others, the circumstances are the same when SVB or NVB occurs. When you are with others it is much harder to verify this, but when you are alone this is easy to do. Once you experimented with the SVB/NVB distinction by yourself, you will become capable of accurately assessing the SVB and NVB in others. As long as you haven’t experimented on your own you will be incapable of accurately accessing others. It is equally problematic to think that others are causing their own behavior or that you are causing your own behavior. In both cases you engage in NVB. We co-regulate each other and ourselves in SVB, but we dis-regulate each other and ourselves in NVB.