May 16, 2016

May 16, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for you to spend time alone so that you can talk out loud by yourself. Just say whatever you are thinking and feeling and listen to the sound of your voice and don’t do anything else. Unless that experiment is done, your response rate of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) cannot increase. The reason that SVB is easier to be achieved and maintained when we are alone is because there is less distraction. Something good could come from being rejected and abandoned if it leads to talking out loud with ourselves. Although public speech naturally recedes into our private speech, we can bring out this private speech again into public speech by ourselves. As this is often not supported, this leads to separation between public speech and private speech. This is characteristic for Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). During NVB there is no connection between our public speech and our private speech and one contradicts and excludes the other. During SVB, by contrast, there is congruence between what we think to ourselves privately and what we say to others publicly. Due to this split, due to exposure to and involvement in NVB, we feel awkward about listening to ourselves when we speak out loud by ourselves when we are alone. To the extent that there was no support for bringing out our private speech into our public speech, we think it is insane to talk out loud and to listen to ourselves. These judgements about talking with ourselves and listening to ourselves while we speak will subside, when we tune into the sound of our wellbeing.  This can’t happen if we remain anxious, but by being alone the chances that we will relax into this are much bigger than when we remain together. Even with the best of good intentions others usually don’t stimulate us to listen to ourselves so that we actually begin to hear ourselves. We were conditioned to focus our attention on others, but not on ourselves. We were conditioned to listen to others, but not to ourselves. SVB teaches us to listen to ourselves. Moreover, SVB teaches us that self-listening makes other-listening possible.