May 6, 2015

May 6, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

When a listener identifies a speaker as someone who produces Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the listener discriminates the eliciting effects of the sound of the speaker’s voice, by expressing the events which happen within his or her own skin. In a very real sense, the listener nonverbally behaves the speaker, who has an immediate effect on the listener and who reacts to the aversively-sounding speaker with respondent behavior. Such respondent behavior is mediated by the listener’s sympathetic nervous system and is called the fight-flight-freeze response. 

According to Stephen Porgess's Poly Vagal Theory (2013), the fight-flight part of this response involves the mobilization of the listener, but the freeze part involves the immobilization of the listener. Since these are nonverbal implicit processes, listeners who listen to NVB speakers often run into problems, while trying to express verbally what they experience nonverbally. They express a mismatch between their verbal and nonverbal behavior, that is, as speakers, the listener is also stimulated to produce NVB. As long as this mismatch is not verbalized both the production and reinforcement of NVB continues.  

The listener will be able to discriminate Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) when he or she is capable of verbally expressing the nonverbal well-being that he or she is experiencing while listening to the speaker. Again, such a listener is directly responding to the sound of the speaker, which now immediately has a completely opposite effect as in NVB. The voice of the SVB-speaker instantly induces a parasympathetic autonomic response in the listener. Although there will also be some sympathetic activation, this serves to make the listener alert. 

Proper stimulation of the listener by the speaker results in the listener’s ability to effortlessly follow and understand what the speaker is saying. During SVB,  within the listener’s skin, no nonverbal aversive events occur, which distract the listener from what the speaker is saying. In other words, the voice of the SVB-speaker expresses and evokes in the listener the congruence between his or her nonverbal and verbal behavior. Also, when the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, his or her listening and speaking behavior become joined, because they happen at the same rate and intensity level. SVB is an important behavioral cusp. Porgess's Poly Vagal Theory explains that Social Engagement, that is, talking and listening, can only occur in the absence of aversive stimulation.