Supposedly You Already Know SVB

Dear Reader,

Supposedly, you don’t have any Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), but, if that was true, why aren’t you talking with me and having Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)?? Most people who read this will not talk with me, as they refuse to recognize the truth of these written words while speaking with me. I can recognize the difference between SVB and NVB. Those, who like, me are also familiar with the SVB/NVB distinction, will immediately recognize anyone who claims to have SVB, but in fact engages in NVB. It is because we recognize the great difference between SVB and NVB that we can afford not to get involved anymore in NVB. I see no value in having a confrontational conversation (which would be NVB!) to point out someone’s NVB. In the past, I had many of such conversations, which never went anywhere and left me depleted. Even after learning about the difference between SVB and NVB, for a long time, due to my dreadful history of conditioning, I couldn’t resist the temptation of trying to let all NVB speakers know that, although they engage in NVB, they could also be SVB speakers and I got myself in trouble again and again and again…

Now, I can leave the NVB speakers alone, as I have found that writing about them is safer and more effective. By writing about people, who, as communicators, are each other’s environment and either allow each other to have SVB or force each other to have NVB, I am able to distance myself from the abusive NVB speaker. A certain selection process has begun to reveal itself: only by maintaining my distance from NVB and by engaging in SVB, could I get and remain clear about the difference between SVB and NVB.

The spoken analysis of how we as human beings interact is a dangerous affair due to which many have lost their lives. Since we mainly engage in NVB and seldom in SVB, we are all conditioned by and expecting a punitive, threatening way of talking. Forceful behavior control, which always goes hand in hand with NVB, can be replaced by positive behavior control with SVB, but for that to happen, we have to become aware about how aversive control always elicits equally aversive counter-control. Stated differently, anytime we directly try to stop a speaker from having NVB, we ourselves engage in it and create more of it.

All NVB speakers are NVB speakers – and most likely will remain NVB speakers – not, as is often suggested, because they have decided to be NVB speakers, but because they are repeatedly in environments which aversively affect them. If NVB speakers would be able to spend enough time in aversive-free environments, they would naturally and effortlessly become SVB speakers. This behavioristic knowledge is absent in our culture and thus, we keep blaming each other for the aversive contingencies by which we all, to a very large extent, have been and continue to be affected. It is impossible to avoid the horrible consequences of NVB as long as we don’t even understand why we keep engaging in it in the first place. NVB reader, I will continue to write to you and to invite you to talk with me in 2019. When you talk with me, you will notice your NVB can be stopped, you can still engage in SVB.