October 20, 2015

October 20, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Reader, 

Let’s get this straight: you are not causing your own behavior. You can read and understand these words as someone taught you how to read and talk. To the extent that teaching was based on the unity between the speaker and the listener, you were in a supportive environment. The absence of this unity informs you about how often you were not supported and therefore basically abandoned and rejected. In your loneliness you may have tried to talk with yourself, but let’s face it, your attempts were as unsuccessful as your conversations with others.

Let me explain something to you about our communication. What goes on in the name of our spoken communication is mostly Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). NVB is based on the separation between the speaker and the listener. In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) the speaker and the listener are experienced as one. Because of this separation between the speaker and the listener you don’t realize that your private speech, what you say to yourself, is a consequence of public speech, of what others have said to you. In other words, your negative self-talk, your NVB covert speech, is caused by the negative or NVB public speech of others. Likewise, your SVB covert speech, your peaceful private speech, is caused by the SVB public speech of caring others. Stated differently, you neither caused your public speech nor your private speech. What you say to yourself is caused by what others have said to you. To the extent that those who have talked with you themselves had SVB, you have acquired SVB private speech or what we call peaceful thoughts. 

Thinking is a verbal behavior in which the speaker and the listener occur within the same person. The separation you so often notice in your thinking is caused by the way in which others talk with you. When you say out loud to yourself what you think and when you listen to the sound of your voice while you do that, you notice that this separation dissolves. It can dissolve as you are both the speaker and the listener. Also, as you say what you think out loud, you bring out your private speech into public speech. While doing this you realize that you were previously not allowed to say what you think. In other words, the NVB of others have separated private speech from public speech. In SVB, however, covert speech is perceived as a function of overt speech and negative private speech is therefore considered as a consequence of negative NVB public speech. By listening to yourself while you speak, you realize that what you are thinking is simply a continuation of the kind of conversation that you have been involved in. Moreover, if the conversations that you were involved in and exposed to, as they most of time do, separated the speaker from the listener, it is not surprising that your thinking, your private speech, is conflicted. Unless you speak your thoughts out loud, you cannot hear this conflict. You are conflicted with yourself as you do not take time to listen to yourself. If you will do that you immediately hear it and it will dissolve, but since you don’t talk out loud and listen to yourself, you keep having these unexpressed conflicting thoughts. These troubling thoughts will not go away even when someone else is listening to you. If therapy works, and it often doesn’t, it makes you listen to yourself. The speaker and the listener can only be perceived as one, if this speaker and this listener are one and the same person. Yes, you can have SVB all by yourself. These words are written to stimulate you to have SVB on your own.  

These written words are a form of SVB public speech, which stimulates SVB private speech in you, while you read this. I urge you to read these words out loud and listen to your voice. You will find that you sound good. Your relaxed sound makes and keeps you conscious as the speaker and the listener are the same person. You can talk like this with others and others can talk like this with you. The oneness which we experience by ourselves and with each other is maintained by a new way talking in which the speakers listen to themselves and co-regulate each other. Your authentic voice is made possible by these words.

If spoken, these words are sounds. If spoken by you, these words are your sound. If this sound is listened to, SVB is effortlessly achieved. It can’t be missed. If it is missed you are not listening to your sound. If you are not reading it out loud there is nothing to listen to. You must read it out loud, if you want to verify if this is true. Just doing that for only one moment will not be enough. If you keep reading these words and use them to listen to yourself, SVB will begin to reveal itself to you. 

I am very happy to write these words as it is as if I am speaking with you. Not too long ago, I was unable to do this. I was convinced that writing could not affect speaking as I was writing to an audience which was not listening and which was never going to listen. Now that I am writing to you, I am writing to a different audience. I am grateful to you for reading this and for listening to this. I like our conversation and I appreciate your feedback. Writing is similar to speaking to the extent that the writer and the reader are the same person. If the writing or the reading separates the writer from the reader, it is still a consequence of the NVB speaking that we have been involved in. I am thinking about   behavioristic writings which are not read or paid attention to by those who are against it. Such writings were directed at the wrong audience.