October 12, 2016

October 12, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

I am proposing an easy and effective way to treat our mental health problems and to stimulate and maintain healthy and happy relationships. We sound the way we do because of people we were with and are with. By focusing on how we sound while we speak we can keep things simple while we explore and learn about more complex phenomena. 

No topic is left unaddressed during Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but during Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) one topic always becomes more important than another. We sound different when we engage in SVB or NVB. As we overvalue what we say, we have not paid much attention to how we sound. We often keep getting carried away by what we say.

The sound of our voice is only available to be listened to in the moment that we produce it. We are only able to hear our sound when we listen to ourselves while we speak. Our speaking and listening behavior, that is, production and observation of our speech, occur in the here and now.

During SVB we are sensitive, conscious speakers, who embody their speech, but during NVB we are insensitive, unconscious, disembodied talking heads. Our psychological problems are problems of repetition, but we can only become aware of that by listening to how we sound.

By listening to ourselves while we speak we are aware, we don’t become aware. As we were mostly engaged in and conditioned by NVB, we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak. I stimulate my clients as well as my students to listen to their voice while they speak and each time they do that the solution to their problems becomes available to them.

People recover from mental health problems only to the extent that they listen to themselves. By decreasing NVB and by increasing SVB they discover another way of talking with others and with themselves. Regardless of what diagnoses they have, all my clients are improving.

My students are surprised that my class is so different from any other class. They hesitatingly acknowledge, engage in, explore and appreciate that they are actually enjoying genuine communication. They become more open, more talkative and more at ease. They agree, as the semester progresses, that SVB is increasing and NVB is decreasing.

Similarly to my mental health clients, my student’s learning experience is enhanced by the SVB/NVB distinction which provides an acceptable formulation of their behavior. Although in each class there is a fair amount of skepticism about my analysis, they realize that it works.

Even students who don’t say very much in class convey in their papers how much they enjoy SVB. It is evident from the feedback that people who have no background in radical behaviorism are capable of using my extension to produce a functional analysis of their own behavior. They repeatedly let me know that my teaching has great value for them.

As a teacher and as a therapist I am proud to see, hear and read about my student’s and client’s progress. The changes in behavior that occur are visible, audible and permanent. It is rewarding to be able to predict these changes and to create the situation which makes them possible.

I affect my students and clients with the sound of my voice. They get more attuned to my sound and each time we speak they also become attuned to their own sound.. I induce SVB in them and they induce SVB in me. I have great confidence that things will only get better as we go.

I take my job as a psychology instructor very serious and I call myself a verbal engineer. I am grateful to my clients who trust me to practice the science I have dedicated my life to.  I teach everyone that there is nothing to be gained from the superficiality and coerciveness of NVB.

Understanding of your behavior requires another way of talking. Once you know that SVB is possible and necessary, you become responsible for the environment in which it can and will occur. We are each other’s environment; we either co-regulate or we dysregulate each other.