September 5, 2014

September 5, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

It seems like it was only just yesterday that this writer was getting frustrated about his interactions with other people, but nowadays he almost doesn’t get upset anymore. Moreover, in recent days various people have been complimenting him for his ability to maintain his equanimity. There is a particular reason why this is happening. 

This writer has good experiences with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) every day. He is so often reinforced for SVB that his behavioral momentum has steadily increased. With the increase of effective and rewarding behavior, his tendency to get frustrated with people who don’t want to have it has slowly, but surely declined. He now understands that they don’t want it, because they can't want it.

He also understands that due to old circumstances his attention was mainly drawn to the fact that individuals didn’t want to have SVB. He now understands it is not that they don’t want it, but that they have not been in the circumstances to want it. In other words, there are no ingredients for them to want it and there were ingredients, which prevented this writer from having it too.

As this writer kept experimenting with how environments affect his behavior, he has become happier and more successful. His ability to  ignore the NVB from others is because he is no longer trying to decrease it in himself. Until quite recently, due to his previous conditioning, he somehow still believed that he needed to decrease his own NVB and increase his own SVB, but now he doesn’t view it that way anymore. He is neither responsible for his NVB or his SVB. Since he knows that SVB and NVB are caused by the environment, his attention can go without distraction to what maintains either one.