July 20, 2014

July 20, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

The world is in such a bad shape because of how we talk with each other. Things would definitely change for the better if we knew how to change the way in which we talk. We don’t know how to change the way we talk, but this writer knows it and he has known it for many years. We have no idea that the way in which we speak is causing all of our problems. However, we are in this together and we must learn together to have a different way of communication. Most people aren’t even part of the conversation or they live in the illusion that they communicate. Day in day out, they practice what this writer calls Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Drastic as this may sound, our usual way of communicating needs to be stopped. Only when NVB is kept at bay can we begin to explore and maintain Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).

To stop NVB it is important to realize that everything that is negative in our lives is caused by it. Our unhappiness is determined and continued by how we speak. We have been telling ourselves and each other that we need to change what we say, but what needs to change is how we say things. SVB focusses our attention on how we speak. If giving instruction is, as behaviorists have suggested, the most important function of language, this means that we are doing a really bad job at giving instructions, both to each other and to ourselves. Most instructions to ourselves and each other don’t lead to the results we would like. Many times there is nothing wrong with the instructions we give, but with how we instruct.

As long as we are impatient, demanding, insensitive, overpowering, forceful and harsh, our instructions will elicit negative emotions. Negative emotions affect how we speak. If our way of talking constantly generates negative emotions, our relationships are going to be based on negative experiences. 

We don’t instruct ourselves and each other to listen to ourselves. When we instruct others, we instruct them to listen to us. When we instruct ourselves, we beat ourselves up and we force ourselves to be this way and that way, but none of this results into us listening to ourselves. Listening to ourselves can’t be done with effort. Even if one decides to listen to one self, then most likely one is not.

Listening while one speaks is not an effort. As long as there is effort in one’s way of speaking, one is not listening to oneself. Obviously, if it takes great effort for the speaker to speak, it takes great effort for the listener to follow what the speaker is saying. If, however, the speaker speaks effortlessly, then the listener can hear and understand effortlessly as well. This is only possible in SVB, in which the attention is on the listener instead of on the speaker. 

If we were to instruct each other to listen to ourselves, we would have better communication, because self-listening includes other-listening. However, if we keep trying to make others to listen to us, our focus is on other-listening, which excludes self-listening. The former characterizes SVB and the latter NVB. The ubiquity of NVB signifies that other-listening has been insisted on. To change things we need to insist on self-listening. Only self-listening will bring about the positive emotion which is needed to be able listen to others. When due to our lack of self-listening only negative emotions are expressed, we don’t want to listen, although we may be able to pretend that we are.

A functional account of language makes us pay attention to antecedents and consequences. What makes us talk the way we do and what happens because of how we communicate? We talk the way we do because of our upbringing. In the early stages of language development, when echoing the sound was all we were capable off, we tried to produce the sounds of the people from our verbal community. We were reinforced for our language. To the extent that this included aspects of SVB or NVB, this set the stage for how we talk today. If our upbringing contained a lot of components of SVB, this is noticeable in how we speak today. However, having experienced a lot of SVB moments while growing up didn't necessarily result into a happy childhood or lead to more experiences of SVB during the rest of our lives. To the contrary, the more components of SVB were communicated while we were growing up, the more problems this causes us during our life, when we are trying to recreate these circumstances, but incapable of doing so. One gigantic consequence of SVB is the realization that nobody knows about it. People think that they themselves cause their language, but they are unaware that their verbal behavior is caused by their environment. In spite of much rejection, this writer was reinforced and went on exploring SVB.