October
22, 2015
Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S.
Verbal Engineer
Dear Reader,
This writing
is to explain Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) to you. You have had instances of it,
but you have never had it deliberately, consciously, continuously, consistently
and skillfully. You don’t need to practice to achieve SVB. In fact, as long as
you think you can do it, you are not going to have it. SVB is acquired without
any effort once you will become more often involved in SVB. How is that going
to come about, you might wonder? Unless you are going to be in my Principles of
Psychology class or become my mental health client, I will probably not meet
you that much.
Most likely, you will have to figure out SVB, like I did, on
your own. I can tell you how I stumbled on it. I say stumbled as there was
really no way of avoiding it. My life at the time was one big mess. I was
unhappy and feeling rejected and I didn’t know where I was going. I was especially
upset about how people interacted with me, so much so that I decided I didn’t
want to talk with anyone anymore. My despair was such that I feared I was going
insane. They only way to save myself was to stay put and to allow myself to
calm down and think. It was during this period of crisis that I, like many
others who went crazy, began talking out loud with myself. It immediately
calmed me down and it made me feel so good that I kept exploring it further and
further. I explained to myself why I was in the situation I was in. At that
time, I sat by myself, on a carpet, in the empty attic of my house. Since I had
studied classical singing for many years, I was used to listening to my own
sound. I noticed that I sounded calm and that I was feeling relaxed.
It was
unbelievable. I was in a deep existential crisis, but by speaking a few words
out loud to myself, I regained a sense of clarity which I had been missing for
a long time. I felt as if I became charged with energy. I was worried that I
was merely fooling myself and went to my friend Lak and told him what had
happened. He acknowledged what I said and agreed that I sounded better than
last time he had heard me. He liked to listen to himself while he speaks so
much that we engaged in a long conversation in which we explored this new phenomenon.
It was clear to him that I was more familiar with listening to myself than him.
Instead of taking offense, he laughed and fooled around each time I ‘caught’
him while he was not listening to himself, each time he was going on a rant (he
used to drink and smoke pot) or was distracting my attention from something I
was trying to point out. He caught on really quickly and noticed that I too was
often not listening to myself and he corrected me when that happened. By
correcting and co-regulating each other we discovered a new way of talking,
which we had never experienced before. It was so delightful and interesting
that we would talk sometimes for a whole day while walking through the streets
of our hometown, the parks, the beach and the dunes. On our way we met people
we knew, but we also talked with total strangers and after we introduced them
to what we were doing, they joined our conversation.
I was not as
experienced as I am now and our talks often ended in some kind of disagreement,
but each time I went back to my attic and talked with myself again, I realized
I had stopped listening to myself. By talking out loud with myself, I could
hear again how I sound when I listen to myself, when circumstances are such
that I am capable of listening to myself. It took me years to find out what is
needed to listen to myself. Slowly but surely I became capable of creating the right
circumstances.
As Lak had
reinforced my first SVB baby-steps and as we had such fun talking with each
other, I organized meetings at my house in which we explored this phenomenon.
Lak and many people who came to these evenings were mainly interested in
esoteric stuff, but this new kind of talking brought reality back to their
lives. Although some meetings were better than others and it was initially
difficult to get people to join, the meetings were so successful that I wanted
to go on no matter how many obstacles I encountered. It was apparent from the
beginning that SVB required an environment in which I made some adjustments. As
more and more people became familiar with it, my teachings were reinforced and
more and more SVB become available. I am telling you about this history as it
helps you to say these words out loud, to listen to yourself and to realize
that you can achieve SVB on your own and then begin to share it with your
friends or those who are close to you. It can and it will spread in this way
and it hasn’t and it couldn’t be spread in any other way as we haven’t explored
the interaction in which we can have our unique expression.
Although you may
think you already have SVB, I claim that you haven’t. My claim is based on the
thousands of conversations in which people have told me that they realize how
little SVB there is in their lives. For many it is quite shocking and embarrassing and our
inability to create and maintain SVB environments exposes our lack of knowledge
about human interaction. You will find that it is easier to have SVB on your own, by
yourself than with others. When you are alone it is easier to equalize speaking and listening behavior than when you are in conversation with
others. When you first taste SVB on your own by listening to yourself and by
speaking this text out loud, you will be much better prepared to have it with
others as you will be able to notice when they are not listening to themselves.
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