June 27, 2015

June 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my seventh response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). Reading this paper makes clear to me that learning about the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is exactly the same as how autistic children are taught about language. All the science is there, but now it needs to be applied to the so-called normal people. 

Yesterday, I was reading another paper “What is wrong with daily life in the Western world?” (1986), in which Skinner writes “Contingencies of reinforcement are an important field in the experimental analysis of behavior, and what is wrong with daily life in the West is precisely the field of Applied Behavioral Analysis” (underlinging added). What is wrong is our way of talking. This wrong way of talking in which our behavior is under control of contingencies of punishment rather than of contingencies of reinforcement is NVB. Skinner writes “We see, hear and taste things in the world around us, and we feel things with our bodies.” This is also the case while we talk. I disagree with his statement “The sense organs with which we feel are not as easily observed as those with which we see things in the world around us.” It only seems that way as our orientation is outward due to our NVB. In SVB we change our outward orientation as we listen to ourselves while we speak. When we do that, we are able to observe the world around and within us. Inward orientation – while speaking – includes outward orientation, but outward orientation – while speaking – excludes inward orientation. 

In NVB, in which we don’t listen to ourselves, there is no inward orientation and there cannot be. When Skinner writes “And we cannot report what we feel as accurately as what we see, because those who teach us to do so lack information about the body we feel”, he is basically saying that he has difficulty talking about his feelings. This is a typical feature of NVB. As he recognizes the influence of American culture with which lots of things are wrong, he correctly views the weakness of not being able “to report what we feel as accurately as what we see”, as a verbal behavior that is caused by our environment. Since others, “who teach us”, are our environment, but “lack information about the body we feel”, we can only report what we feel in our own body ourselves. This is what the speaker-as-own-listener does and by doing so he or she will find SVB. Skinner asks “What is felt when we are not enjoying our lives?”, but I am interested in the question of what is felt when we are not enjoying our own way of talking or someone else’s way of talking? Since we are simultaneously the speaker and the listener, we find that listening to ourselves while we speak couldn’t happen because the contingencies maintained only our dominant way of talking: NVB.  

Although Skinner is aware that “The human species took a unique evolutionary step when its vocal musculature came under operant control and language was born”, he doesn’t understand that “What is to be changed if we are to feel differently” is our way of talking; not what we say, but how we say it.  Skinner thinks it is only what we say that determines that “much of the strengthening effect of the consequences of behavior has been lost.” He emphasizes “The association of reinforcement with feeling is so strong that it has been said that things reinforce because they feel good or feel good because they reinforce” and he points out the great difference between the “pleasing effect of reinforcement” versus the “strengthening effect.” 

As the discoverer of SVB, however, I tell you with certainty that our fixation on words, in addition to the previously mentioned outward orientation, causes and maintains our NVB. Thus “The evolution of cultural practices has miscarried” and “the erosion of the contingencies of reinforcement” happened as we keep talking ourselves deeper into this mess. NVB erodes the strengthening effect of the consequences of our vocal verbal behavior, but SVB stimulates the strengthening effects of the consequences of our vocal verbal behavior.  Although “we have moved toward a way of life that is free from all kinds of unpleasant things”, we have created more and more NVB and less and less SVB.

There were only a couple of things I still wanted to write about Greer and Longano’s paper, but I got side-tracked by Skinner's paper and now want to respond to that. I am intrigued by his remark that in the West we have gone so far in freeing ourselves from aversive conditions that “As a result, there is very little left to escape from or act to prevent. The strengthening consequences in negative reinforcement that we enjoy as relief have been lost. We are suffering from what might be called libertas nervosa.” 

When people discover SVB their reaction is always two-fold: on the one hand, they are relieved it is still possible, but on the other hand, they realize that SVB is against the current culture. It is this dual aspect which strengthened my desire to investigate it. 

Interestingly, Skinner recognizes that “The strengthening effect of reinforcement is eroded when people do things only because they have been told to do them” (underlinging added). NVB goes right along with the “expansion” of “rule-governed behavior.” The consequences that follow when you don’t do what someone tells you to do or what you are supposed to do, are always negative. In NVB people do what someone else tells them to do or what they are supposed to do, as they will otherwise be punished. They engage in NVB to escape from punishment and their behavior is thus negatively reinforced. However, SVB is more than the escape from NVB, as in SVB the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an appetitive contingency.  

In our talking we experience the immediate positive or negative consequences that strengthen or weaken our behavior. “Formal education is largely a kind of advice, but little of the behavior shaped and maintained in the class room is ever subsequently reinforced in daily life.” It is not reinforced because we have NVB without even knowing it. If it is true that SVB happens more often in the class room than in daily life, we must try to arrange daily life more like a class room, that is, if we want to have SVB in our daily life. When SVB is reinforced in daily life, we will be more open to “scientific advice” of which “the consequences are often long deferred.” Although “the gains are great” because of our NVB “the strengthening effect is often missing.” 

The rules and laws which “enable people to please and avoid displeasing others without submitting to possibly punitive consequences and to respond in appropriate ways when pleased or displeased” have entrenched us in NVB due to which “reinforcing consequences are further eroded.” NVB, just like “the laws of governments and religions are maintained primarily for the sake of the institutions.”  SVB will create a totally different order in society. Although “security or peace of mind” resulted from cultural practices, “following of ethical rules or obeying the laws of government or religion” led to “personal strengthening consequences” which didn't and couldn't improve relationships.  

NVB is often justified as it promises that we will eventually have SVB, but this is not true. The important question which needs to be asked, talked about and agreed upon is: what kind of behavior is reinforced? In  pursuit of “things we call interesting, beautiful, delicious, entertaining and exciting”, our culturally celebrated approach behaviors are reinforced, while our need for avoidance behaviors – which make escape behaviors no longer necessary – are ignored. As avoidance behaviors are central to our stability and well-being and only properly working avoidance behaviors can decrease our need for escape behavior, “What is wrong with life in the West is not that is has too many reinforcers, but that they are not contingent on the kinds of behavior that sustain the individual or promote the survival of the culture or species.” 

Our Western infatuation with and overemphasis of approach behavior goes hand in hand with an increase of escape behavior and a decrease of avoidance behavior, and, of course, an increase of NVB. Many escape behaviors should be considered as failed attempts at avoidance behavior. While avoidance behaviors are not reinforced and while escape behaviors are reinforced, there is no reinforcement for SVB, which is based on avoidance behavior. 

In SVB our escape behaviors are kept at a minimum, avoidance behaviors (of aversive stimulation) are kept at a maximum and approach behaviors are only reinforced to the extent that they don’t result in having to escape from what was approached. All of this is accomplished by SVB. NVB reinforces excess approach behavior and escape behavior, but punishes avoidance behavior.  

Skinner was unaware of the SVB/NVB distinction. “Where thousands of millions of people in other parts of the world cannot do many of the things they want to do, hundreds of millions in the West do not want to do many of the things they can do. In winning the struggle for freedom and the pursuit for happiness, the West has lost his inclination to act” (underlining added). 

Struggle in any way, shape or form, in addition to the already mentioned outward orientation and verbal fixation, always sets the stage for NVB. Surely, the West is the biggest proponent of NVB. Skinner wonders “there seems to be no word, metaphorical or otherwise, for strength itself.” He writes “it is possible that a word is lacking because behavior is often regarded as a mere sign or symptom.” He is concerned with terms as “will”, “compassion” or “libido”, which “are said to happen in the inner world of feelings and states of mind.” However, he doesn’t write or speak about SVB, the way of talking that improves “the strengthening contingencies of behavior.” When we are reinforced for our first SVB response, “we bring a new operant into existence.”

June 26, 2015

June 26, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my sixth response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). When I reread what I wrote yesterday I was surprised how pleased I was. I had thought yesterday’s writing was too chaotic, but when I reread it  it made perfectly sense and I am glad I wrote it the way I did. In recent times, I have also had more moments in which I was glad I said things the way I did and did things in the way I did. 

While reading a paper it is a matter of taking from it only what I can use. “The emergence of Naming from intensive tact instruction appears to be a function of the implicit rotation of speaker and listener opportunities found in the intensive tact instruction, but further analysis is needed.” It sure it is! I think these researchers are on the right track. They address the need for explicit rotation and think that “the process of learning tacts involves the children echoing the tacts initially, because they must learn to say or echo the word in the process of learning the tact, until the child emits the tact without echoic instruction” (underlining added). However, if instruction is given in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the child will echo the words in a NVB manner, but if the instruction was given in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the child will echo the words in a SVB way. 

The words which are echoed in NVB are often elicited, while the words which are echoed in SVB are mostly emitted. Our different ways of talking didn’t come about magically, but were learned due to threatening or safe environmental events. Moreover, the author’s emphasis on echoing, on saying words out loud, paves the way for the joining of the listening and speaking repertoires.


The authors write precisely how this can come about: “As the children received stimulus-stimulus pairings they began to echo, suggesting that the procedure facilitated echoics that in turn resulted in automatic reinforcement.” Thus, on both sides of the talking spectrum, people with more SVB as well as those with more NVB are automatically reinforced for their SVB or NVB. However, only in SVB speaking and listening repertoires are going to be joined, but in NVB speaking and listening become more and more separate. This concurs with “Stemmer’s proposal that Naming emerged from a history of second-order classical conditioning (Stemmer, 1973, 1990, 1994, 1996). 

Teachers of children with language delay probably already do this, because they support language development, but it must be SVB instruction, not NVB instruction. “If children are missing the echoic as a conditioned reinforcer, then stimulus-stimulus pairing experiences may provide the necessary prerequisite.” NVB instructions are going to be ineffective and harmful. It is quite likely that our high rates of NVB cause language deficits. 

What now follows is my paraphrasing of a presentation “Introduction to Verbal Behavior” by Tracy Vail, which can be googled on internet. By looking closely at behavior of autistic children, behavior analysts identified the cycle that perpetuates aberrant behavior: absence of alternative behaviors leads to an increase of stereotypy, which impairs learning and in turn results in fewer acquired new skills. Normal people can learn from the treatment of autistic children. How do these children learn to talk? This is accomplished by increasing motivating operations (MO). This is not done by making them fearful, by punishing or by coercing them, but by reinforcing them. 


If they are still nonverbal, we have to start with the nonverbal and then move slowly to the verbal. It is important to take note of how the child responds to the environment, to the analyst and to prevent aversive stimulation. By being playful with the child the MO for verbal behavior is established. If the child begins to anticipate what is going to happen next, doing something unexpected can bring more enjoyment. As the play progresses routines can be created, which also can be gradually changed over time. The analyst must maintain his or her connection with the child and must be sensitive. Moreover, he or she must pair his or her talking with the reinforcement. His or her way of talking must be reinforcing to the child. This is exactly how SVB works! 

In SVB the speaker is the reinforcer. The speaker in SVB does exactly what the behavior analyst does to the autistic child: he or she teaches errorless, fades demands, teaches to fluency, prompts quickly, fades the prompts, makes sure all questions are answered, finds numerous reinforcers, corrects errors and has fun. The behavior analyst wouldn’t gain any ground with the autistic child if he or she would follow negative behavior with reinforcement; remove the child from a reinforcing activity to begin teaching; give directions to do things which he or she couldn’t prompt; give directions without getting compliance; and, kill reinforcers by placing too many demands. This exactly describes NVB! In NVB the speaker is the punisher.

In NVB the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with and aversive contingency. It works the same for autistic children as for normal people. Teaching language skills to autistic children informs us about our adult way of communicating, which is mostly aversive and which is therefore problematic. Moreover, the key to successful language teaching is to pair sounds and to make talking fun. Specifically therapists must be pairing their sounds with fun. In SVB we listen to ourselves while we speak and we find out that we are having fun while we are talking and that talking is both interesting and reinforcing. All the positive experiences of the speaker-as-own-listener reinforce our SVB. 

If NVB is produced by a parent, the child will imitate this sound and unconsciously identify it for what it is. Regardless of what sound is produced by the speaker, all sounds are analyzed. Soon the child-listener, who becomes a speaker, will be able to recognize SVB and NVB. SVB is learned as it is reinforcing, but NVB will give rise to stereotypy in autistic children. Stereotypy are a form of counter-control. These stereotypy must be replaced by SVB. Even if a mistake is made something new is learned. Making mistakes is needed to recognize NVB as NVB as SVB as SVB, and the better a person gets at recognizing NVB as NVB, the better he or she gets at recognizing SVB as SVB. 

One becomes the stepping stone for the other. Unless we recognize NVB as NVB we cannot move to SVB. Similarly, the autistic child at some point recognizes that there is reinforcement available in the verbal realm, which wasn’t available in the nonverbal realm. NVB keeps us trapped in nonverbal behavior, in negative feelings of being threatened, intimidated, coerced, attacked, mistrusted, isolated, abandoned and dismissed. 

Even if we produce NVB, the vocal attempt must be reinforced, because it is better than no attempt at all. Every step of the way needs to be shaped. Once errors have been corrected then more reinforcement will follow. As this is done with positive feelings, it reminds us and will be linked to all favorite activities which we find reinforcing. Learning starts with NVB, which is more nonverbal, but during SVB we become fully verbal. Teaching a new behavior can only built on behavior that is already there.  

 

Old NVB, which happened under threatening circumstances, is likely to be repeated even under circumstances in which there is environmental support. Under new positive SVB circumstances  old NVB will be highlighted and recognized. The prompts that enable the speaker to switch from NVB to SVB are gradually faded once the speaker is able to continue with SVB. As in teaching language skills to autistic children, new learning is built on old learning and SVB is built on NVB. When each instance of NVB is corrected there will be errorless learning. 

If the speaker produces NVB it needs to be simply stated that this is an incorrect response. The teacher must of course be able to produce SVB as a discriminative stimulus for the student. He or she demonstrates SVB and models what the student would sound like if he or she would have SVB. The student hears in the teacher what  he or she would sound like if he or she produced the correct response. The student echoes what the teacher just said. 

Repetition of the discriminative stimulus, called Voice II, the voice which produces SVB, gives the student the opportunity to echo back the sound which was produced by the teacher. If done correctly, the teacher acknowledges this and when the student experiences the reinforcing effects of his or her own SVB, he or she realizes that by manding or asking, people will do things for him or her; by tacting or naming, he or she can label things in the environment under a variety of conditions; by listening, he or she can follow directions and do what others tell him or her to do; by imitation and by echoics, he or she can do or say what others do or say; by having intraverbals, he or she will know that what he or she says is dependent on what others say or have said, but is not the same. 

Teaching SVB deals with the fact that in NVB even verbally skilled people remain stuck with nonverbal discomfort. The voice that produces NVB is called Voice I as it must be discriminated before we can switch to Voice II, the voice of SVB. Since we can’t produce these two voices simultaneously, we can only produce one or the other successively. Although the switching between Voice I and II can happen rapidly, this will decrease once the speaker experiences Voice II as reinforcing and Voice I as punishing. 

In dysfunctional environments in which SVB was punished and NVB was reinforced, the child has repeatedly echoed NVB and is automatically reinforced by his or her NVB private speech. SVB leads to intraverbal revelations; the adult speaker recognizes that his or her negative self- talk or NVB private speech, was produced by NVB public speech. By learning about SVB, he or she knows that positive self-talk or SVB private speech can only come from SVB public speech. SVB will transform a person’s sense of self, in which he or she sees him or herself as a product of how others are and have been talking with or at him or her. As listening to ourselves and others becomes important, our sense of self becomes more fluid and flexible as it always reflects our environment.

June 25, 2015

June 25, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

This is the fifth response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is learned in a similar way than children learn “Naming.” SVB cannot be learned without the “rotation across listener and speaker responses.” 

"The characteristics of the learn unit were suggested in Skinner’s (1968) programmed instruction frame.” Moreover, “learn units require that a) the participant is attending to the stimulus”, which means the participant speaks and listens to his or her own voice; b) “there is an opportunity to respond” which means, the listener becomes the speaker, but can disagree or agree with the speaker and does not feel any pressure to choose one over the other; c) “correct responses are reinforced with consequences that have been shown to reinforce learning”, which means, when SVB is produced the speaker feels reinforced and wants to say more in a SVB manner. Consequences that reinforce learning are evident by increased opportunity to be in environments in which or to be with individuals with whom SVB can occur; d) “the participant must emit an accurate response following incorrect responses.” This is the ability to differentiate between SVB and NVB and to change one’s speaking behavior. Also, there is no guilt or shame involved in making an incorrect response. As there is no punitive correction the change from NVB to SVB is effortless and smooth. Moreover, the listener is helping the speaker, by letting the speaker know when the joining of speaking and listening occurs and the speaker adjusts to the listener. It is the listener who becomes the speaker who lets the  speaker know that joining occurs. Unless a speaker immediately produces SVB there is now way for him or her to know whether he or she is having SVB than by getting feedback from the listener, who then becomes the new speaker; e)” the corrected responses are not reinforced” by the listener as they are automatically reinforcing to the speaker. To learn SVB one is like a musician, who diligently practices his instrument; he or she practices because he or she loves the music and enjoys his or her own voice.

 

June 24, 2015

June 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my fourth response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). 


I went to the ear, nose and throat doctor because some weeks ago my right ear was clogged up. It had already gone away and everything was fine with my hearing, except for a little high frequency loss which comes with aging. 


The lady who tested my ears told me something remarkable. She had worked in phonological testing for more than thirty years, so she knew what she is talking about. Often when elderly people come in for hearing aids, they are brought in by their family members, who notice that they are having hearing problems.  The nurse mentioned that when people get older they have less and less contacts and therefore they talk less and less. She stated that without interaction our hearing simply atrophies.

What she didn’t talk about, however, was that people also don’t hear themselves when they talk so little with others. Readers of my writings know we don’t hear ourselves very much anyway, even if we have people to talk with all day. Most conversation is Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the speaker doesn’t hear him or herself while he or she speaks. This is because in NVB the speaker wants to make the listener listen to him or to her.

Stated bluntly, in NVB the speaker forces the listener to listen. In NVB speakers don't listen to themselves process. This process is further enhanced by the aging process when the chances to do so become slimmer and slimmer. Thus, old age is for most of us a period of decreasing opportunity for auditory stimulation. 

The nurse also told me that when elderly folks are brought in to have their hearing checked or to get a hearing aid, they often have great trouble adjusting to the hearing aid, that is, to the overwhelming amount of sounds they are now able to perceive. Not surprisingly, this leads old people to become stressed out and to not put in their hearing aid. A lot of coaching and gradually getting used to the hearing aid is needed. Another interesting observation of the talkative nurse was that once people are using their hearing aid, their hearing improves upon later testing. By having the hearing aid, they are using their user-dependent ears again, which then improve. I asked if this was always the case and she answered with an unequivocal yes. This means that older people can actually regain at least some of their hearing. 

One can only begin to imagine what would be the positive outcome if elderly folks were more often exposed to opportunities to talk and stimulated into increased social engagement. Most likely, the incidence of hearing loss would drop dramatically. 

I was reminded of an old couple I once worked with. The hard-of-hearing, moody and suspicious husband was driving his wife  nuts. Their daughter heard them bickering all the time. The wife, who was tired of having to repeat herself a million times, didn’t sound very nice to her husband. In fact, she sounded quite harsh and negative. I asked her to listen to herself while she spoke with him. Then a miracle happened. He immediately let her know that he could hear and understand her very well as she was speaking with a kinder, calmer and less controlling voice. As I coached her to not aversively influence her husband, she felt that now she had become the problem. And so we only had one session.

Another occasion came to mind which I will never forget. I was having dinner at the house of a friend. We were seated around a big table. There were at least fourteen people, including my friend’s old hard-of-hearing mother. There was a lot of talking going on. When I spoke, the old lady suddenly blurted out to me “Young man, this is unusual, I can’t understand anything of what these people are saying, but how is it possible I can hear you perfectly well?” This incident happened twenty five years ago.

While seated in the ENT office I read an article about the neuroscientist, Rebecca Saxe, who studied why people disagree. She looked at the ‘hard’ evidence, that is, at how the brain responds under circumstances of agreeing and disagreeing and she figured out that agreement would only occur when the party who has the power was willing to take the perspective of the party who doesn’t have the power. Perspective taking by the party who doesn’t have any power doesn’t make any sense.   


This applies to the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In SVB we are at our most sensitive as we listen to ourselves and each other. In SVB, we listen because we can listen as our talking is not preventing it. Many of us think that listening to each other is difficult, but it is not. The absence of doing anything makes us listen, but we are that way only if we feel safe. Listening happens without any effort and SVB speaking is also effortless.  

In the Scientific American, I read an article about “sonification of data: converting data that were otherwise displayed visually or numerically into sound.” It appears that our “ears are such terrific pattern-finders that scientists are now using audio data to detect cancer cells from particles from space.” This is possible because our ears “can detect changes in a sound that occur after just a few milliseconds.” Seeing happens at a much slower pace, because “the eyes limit for detecting a flickering light is about 50 to 60 times per second.” This is fascinating as “sonification” has been used to “listen to data” of “solar and cancer activity” and “examine the eruptions of vulcanoes and to discern pattens of changes in particles linked to cosmic microwave background, the radiation left over from the Big Bang.” Of course, the Geiger counter has already been around since 1908 and “emits clicks in the presence of energetic particles.” All this evidence tells me there is hope that eventually we will all be listening while we speak.

The “sound-file has been a revelation” because “ a year’s worth of field measurements which would take months to analyze by eye [bar graphs & pie charts], thus become two hours of sound” (words between brackets added). Bechara Saab , a Swiss neuroscientist addressed the brain mechanisms involved. He says “the ear can pick out subtle patterns” because “a mammal’s auditory system is faster at transmitting neural signals than most other parts of the brain. This system holds the largest known connection between neurons, a giant synapse called calyx of Held. This flower-shaped junction transforms sound waves into spikes in neuron activity; to do so the calyx can release neurotransmitters – the brain’s messengers – 800 times a second.” Our eyes are much slower than our ears. 


Saab emphasizes “in the end these differences in mechanics mean that stimuli that would be “invisible’ to the eye could be easily picked up by the ear.” Not surprisingly, “although sonification offers advantages over visual display” these neuro-sound specialists “face a major hurdle: simply getting researchers to try this new way of exploring data.” This goes right along with our fixation on the verbal in NVB. 


Words, images and diagrams, prevent us from listening. Listening, on the other hand, doesn’t prevent us from seeing. Many people have told me they see things more clearly since they have discovered SVB. Furthermore, they agree that seeing is impaired by NVB. I am reminded of the saying that someone couldn't see the forest for the trees. “From elementary school onward we’re surrounded by visual representations.” We have been and we continue to be conditioned by visual stimuli, which overrule the importance of auditory stimuli. Reality shrank to images on I-Phones, which presumably represent the world.

Scientists, who read and write more than talk and listen, are biased towards the verbal and to bar graphs and pie charts. “By the time someone becomes a scientist, they have a syntax, they have an understanding of how these plots function and a sort of internal logic, whereas if you push ‘play’ and listen to the data for the first time, you don’t have a vocabulary, so you don’t really have a basis for comparison.” The big challenge remains: how do we talk about our scientific findings and will someone be able to listen? Wouldn’t it be much simpler if researchers realized that the reason people don’t listen is because of the vocal verbal behavioral pattern called NVB? SVB arranges a totally different pattern of auditory data and we use different words as well. We would be able to make enormous progress if we would aim to create stable SVB environments in which we controlled for NVB. 

Now I will respond to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). The authors explain the “Multipel-Examplar Instruction” (MEI), in which “multiple responses are learned for single stimuli and variants. That is, an observational instance results in stimulus control for both listener and speaker responding. Initially the response may be one (e.g. a tact) that produces the stimulus for the other response (e.g. a listener response), but eventually the original stimulus evokes both responses.” 

This made me think about how I learned about SVB. I have always been drawn to people who have a lot of SVB and was always repulsed by people who have a lot of NVB. Over the course of my life I have become more selective and I choose mainly for people who have already a lot of SVB. When I began to explore SVB, it was on my own by talking aloud with myself. I gave attention to whatever asked my attention and I would talk about anything that I could think of. Therefore, my attention would jump from something I thought, felt, remembered, saw, said, heard, moved, smelled or touched. I didn't seek to analyze what I said, but would describe whatever was in my attention and I felt that this made it easy for me to listen to myself. By not editing what I was saying I found my own sound, which expressed my relaxation, well-being and meditation. Although of course I produced lots of NVB, I was able to get back to SVB quicker and quicker, to the point where just thinking about it was enough for me to have it. At this point, I am not even trying to have it anymore. I have it so often that it has become part of my life. 

What made the biggest difference for me, however, was when I stopped having contact with my family. Their negative feedback had been so problematic, but since I have kept them out of my life I have doing better than ever before. I am happier without my family. My ability to express and listen to what I think and feel, made me realize I found a treasure, which needs protection.