October 27, 2015

October 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Reader, 

How are you doing? How do you sound when you say that? If it doesn’t sound good to you, how do you think others must be experiencing your voice? If you don’t like the way you sound, others most likely don’t like it either. You may not have noticed this, but there is agreement on how we sound. We may disagree about what we say, about the content of our conversation, but we agree on how we sound. I became aware of this many years ago because I had been studying classical singing. Since I was trying to make a beautiful sound with my songs, I was listening to my voice. However, at some point, I didn’t want to sing anymore. There was something more important I wanted to do, but I didn’t know at the time what it was. I had to give up singing to allow myself to discover it. 

Those were difficult times as singing was very reinforcing to me. It felt like an enormous loss. It was then that I began to listen to myself while I speak. My singing was replaced by speaking as I found that listening to myself while speaking was even more reinforcing to me than singing. Moreover, in my conversations with others it became clear that they were also intrigued with the process of listening to their own voice while they speak. The wonderful conversations which became possible due to this simple mechanism revealed a solution to many problems. 

Each time I engaged in this novel way of talking, others confirmed that it is indeed something intriguing, alive, real and valuable and because of that I dedicated my life to exploring its workings. I set myself the goal to collect data to scientifically prove the existence of this phenomenon.

Short after immigrating to the United States I went back to school and decided to study psychology. I got an Associate Degree (AA Degree) in Social and Behavioral Sciences, a Bachelor’s Degree (BA Degree) in Psychology and a Masters of Art (MA Degree) in Psychology. However, when I wanted to do my internship to become a Doctor of Psychology (PsyD), I found out that the institution from which I took my education was not accredited and that no organizations in my area would take me as an intern. Then I decided to get a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) with an accredited institution. I first got my Master of Science (MS Degree) and then set out to achieve my PhD. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish this because of stress, illness, death of a family member and financial burden. 

I was a PhD candidate, had completed all my course work and was writing my dissertation on attachment styles and unresolved loss. Since there was no support at all for me at my university, I withdrew in 2012. My wife and I moved away from our expensive Mountain View apartment and went back to Chico. Our return was a blessing. As I was out of the program, I stumbled on Walden Two by B.F. Skinner and began studying behaviorist literature. I discovered that although I had taken a course in applied behavior analysis, I hadn’t learned anything about the Science of Human Behavior during my years of study. I realized that radical behaviorism explains the process of listening to ourselves while we speak. I have read many books and papers by behaviorists and tried to contact them to talk about what I now call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). I have two behaviorist friends, one in Holland and one in Columbia, who have acknowledged that my approach to human interaction is explained by behaviorism. My Dutch friend, who knows how I teach my psychology classes, calls me a behavioral engineer. 

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Since a couple of years I have been an Associate Faculty in Psychology and at the local college. This teaching is a great application of SVB as I can work with groups of students for the duration of an entire semester. Never before was there a situation in which I was able to work with groups so consistently and for such a long time. I love teaching as it allows me to shape the behaviors of the students in my class. Their feedback signifies the results of my efforts and their papers are a joy to read as they report on the discoveries they make due to their explorations of SVB. 

I just started a blog, but I don’t think there is enough feedback to remain interested. This writing, on the other hand, gives me more satisfaction as it is ready to be read, understood and put into practice. I like to write this as it generates positive self-talk in me. My writing is a form of positive public speech which generates positive private speech. That our private speech is a function of public speech only becomes apparent in SVB. The only reason we don’t know about this is because we are usually trapped by what I call Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). And, NVB overt speech causes our NVB covert speech. In NVB we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak, but we want others to listen to us or we are straining ourselves to listen to others. Either way, we are outward oriented and remain busy with others. 

In NVB the speaker and the listener are experienced as separate and NVB keeps separating the speaker from the listener. In SVB, however, the speaker and the listener become and remain connected. In SVB there is a sense of oneness and that is why it is so effective. SVB is possible as we pay attention to how we sound while we speak. In other words, in SVB we become and remain attuned to the sound which represents our own well-being. When others hear our SVB, they respond by producing it too.  

October 26, 2015

October 26, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Reader, 

These are interesting days. Many positive reinforcing stimuli have become available now that the stimuli which were determining my previous behavior are avoided. In my dream, I was reading out loud the multiple choice questions on an exam about spoken communication. It was impossible to answer any of these questions as the distinction wasn’t made between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). All of us have asked and answered many questions in our lives about our interactions, about our relationships, about how we communicate, about what to say and when and why we say it, about how to speak and listen, but none of it made any sense as long as the SVB/NVB distinction wasn’t made. There wasn’t and couldn’t be any progress in the absence of this distinction. Once this distinction is made clear, progress will happen of its own accord. Due to your increased  involvement in SVB your memory will begin to change. 

You will gradually be able to remember more positive communication experiences and this process will slowly unfold. No fast changes can be expected, only almost unnoticeable small changes. These small changes will not be made by you, but they will happen to you. You, to whom these changes happen, are transformed. Your self-concept not only changes, it dissolves as you realize that you are constantly changing as a function of the environments that you are in. No time is lost on being stuck anymore as you accurately discriminate your circumstances.   

Without the SVB/NVB distinction your circumstances cannot and will not change. They will not change as you did not change. With this distinction you will change constantly, even when you may still be thinking that you are not changing. It is only when a whole bunch of small changes have been linked together that you will realize that you have been changing all the time. This accumulative process wouldn’t be possible without constant change. You will not waste time anymore on such nonsense as patience as the SVB/NVB distinction will give you a yardstick to measure the increase of SVB instances and decrease of NVB instances. As your SVB instances will go up, your NVB instances will go down. NVB is the problem behavior, which will be replaced by SVB. 

It can only be replaced if it is first identified as the problem behavior. It was never before identified as such. We are beating around the bush when it comes to human interaction. NVB is not interaction. How can something which prevents interaction be interaction? Interaction is a delicate affair, which is easily made impossible by our insensitivity. The sound of the voice of the NVB speaker will always aversively affect the nervous system of the listener. Even if this listener is allowed to speak by this NVB speaker, which most of the time isn’t the case, he or she will also be a NVB speaker. NVB speakers only talk at NVB speakers, but only SVB speakers can talk with other SVB speakers. In other words, the two never mix, because if one stops the other starts. This phenomenon has remained unknown to us as the moments in which we have SVB were never properly defined. Moments of SVB didn’t and couldn’t be prolonged as negative emotion-eliciting NVB made this impossible and was still considered to be a form of communication. In our schools we teach our students there are five communication styles. This is such total nonsense. It becomes clear when we listen to how they sound.

In what is called the assertive style, the speaker’s voice has a medium pitch, speed and volume. In the aggressive style, the speaker’s voice is loud, but in the passive-aggressive style, the speaker often speaks with a sugary sweet voice. In the submissive style, however, the speaker’s volume is soft, but in the manipulative style, the speaker’s voice sounds patronizing, envious and ingratiating and often has a high pitch. It is evident from this brief summary that only the assertive speaker sounds pleasant and falls into the category of SVB. Only the voice which has a medium pitch, speed and volume will be experienced as an appetitive stimulus by the listener. The other styles fall into the NVB category, because the speaker’s voice is experienced by the listener as a noxious stimulus when he or she sounds too loud, too sweet, too soft or has too high of a pitch. Actually, none of these so-called speaking styles have any validity as in the assertive style the speaker presumably is making his or her own choices and taking responsibility for them. The theory of different speaking styles is based on the common belief in the inner causation of behavior and the speaker supposedly decides on how he or she is going to speak. Fact is, however, that this inner self, as B.F. Skinner, the founder of radical behaviorism, has said, is an explanatory fiction, which doesn’t exist and is maintained by NVB. When we switch from NVB to SVB, this always goes hand in hand with a great sense of relief that our belief in the inner causation of our own behavior wasn’t true. When SVB can be achieved it will be apparent that we are each other’s environment and that we cause each other to have SVB or NVB. Moreover, when we have SVB, the notion of speaking styles becomes irrelevant. In SVB we acknowledge that we all have unique behavioral histories. What we used to think of as ourselves was the accumulative effect of our past experiences. In SVB we can let go of our histories.     

October 25, 2015

October 25, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Reader, 

I am so glad you are there. I know you are there. I hope this writing will encourage you to listen to yourself while you speak. Many of my students have done the extra credit assignment, which starts with the simple sentence: “When I listen to the sound of my voice while I speak then I..” The paper has to be two pages long. It helps them to take time and listen to their voice while they speak. It is such a joy to read these papers as each paper confirms how important it is to listen to your voice while you speak. 

If you would do this assignment you would discover for yourself why it is so meaningful. Most likely, like many of my students, you have never really listened to yourself. This is because you were told to listen to others. For most people ‘listening’ means to listen to someone else. Even when others are listening to you, listening is focused on the other and it is outward-oriented. It is no exaggeration to say that our ears are conditioned to listen to others. As of yet, we can’t really listen to ourselves as nobody stimulated it and we are not used to it. There are no situations in which we are stimulated to listen to ourselves, so we keep on listening to others or we keep on trying to make others listen to us. The situation in which you would listen to yourself is one in which you are supported by others to fully express yourself in your own words, in your own pace and in your own rhythm. When does that ever happen? It happens very seldom. And when it happened, it happened accidentally and not deliberately. We never created, maintained and prolonged the situation in which we fully express ourselves as we don’t know how to do this. We wanted others to listen to us and others attempted to listen to us, but we failed. 

No matter how much we have tried to listen to each other, we have not listened to ourselves. We have never recognized that if we don’t listen to ourselves, we cannot really listen to each other. We were never completely satisfied with how others were listening to us as they were always listening to us in a different way than they were listening to themselves. Since we seldom listen to ourselves, there is an enormous difference between how we listen to ourselves and how we listen to others. This difference would decrease if we would listen to ourselves more often. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is happening. We are more and more focused on making others listen to us or on listening to others. The speaker as his or her own listener is almost completely ignored and forgotten. Another reason that this occurs is because we are inclined to attach all sorts of spiritual connotations to this process. This convolutes the simple phenomenon of listening to ourselves while we speak. Only when we do this do we realize that the speaker and the listener are one. This oneness is obvious as the one who speaks is of course the one who listens. There is no difference between the two. This difference is only there because of a particular way of talking, which I call Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the speaker and the listener are separated. In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) there is oneness between the speaker and the listener. You can explore this on your own and try it out. When you have talked for a while and when you have verified and explored there is a way of talking in which the speaker and the listener don’t separate and remain one, you want to have such a conversation with someone else. After you familiarized yourself with SVB on your own, you can go to a friend and ask him or her to listen to him or herself, while he or she speaks with you. When you will speak with that person, you can now both listen to yourself.

What you will find is that when you hear the other person talk, it is as if you are hearing yourself talk. The other person will also find that he or she feels one with you. An unusual openness reveals itself which has never been felt before. The experience of oneness while talking is of great significance. This oneness is very different from togetherness. In togetherness the communicators still remain separate, but when SVB is expressed by these communicators, the stress that was still involved in the togetherness will be dissolved. This is not a belief or an imagination, but a realistic experience, which can be prolonged for as long as you want. 

Given your behavioral history, in which you have been listening to others, in which you have coerced others to listen to you, in which nobody was really listening to anyone, in which you were hoping, longing and imagining that others would one day listen, in which you have talked and talked and talked, but didn’t listen to yourself, in which others dominated you and forced you to listen to them, but they didn’t listen to themselves either, you are bound to fall back to the communication habit called outward orientation. Self-listening includes other-listening, but other-listening excludes self-listening. The oneness can only be restored if you again listen to yourself while you speak and if any other speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. 

SVB will create a completely new order. We are all unique individuals, but we are no longer separate as speakers and listeners. When someone else speaks, it is as if we ourselves have spoken and everything that is known to others can also be known to us. Likewise, all that we have come to know, due to our unique behavioral history, will be effortlessly shared with others. Moreover, there will be continuous learning due to our stimulation of positive emotions. Our conversations will be dynamic and full of action and less and less time will be spend involved in NVB.

October 24, 2015

October 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Reader, 

I am drinking wine and I am drunk with SVB. Why don’t you let me pour a glass for you and get a taste of what I am talking about? These words will not make you grasp it, but your sound is what really matters. That is why you need to read this out loud, so that you can hear your own voice. Many people have told me that they had never heard their own voice before I stimulated them to do so. Chances are big you too have never really attentively listened to yourself, especially not while you were talking. Once you have this experience of listening to yourself while you are speaking, you know whatever prevents that will have to go. It has to go because it is a burden. You will let it go not by being busy with it, but by leaving it alone. In the same way you don’t bother about a pile of dog shit, you don’t bother anymore about NVB. It stinks, it is nasty. You have no attraction to it. Your current involvement in it is because you don’t recognize it for what it is. You haven’t been drunk enough with SVB to tell yourself the truth. Maybe you are afraid about what you will do when your actions are determined by SVB? I know that fear, as I have had it, but I fear it no more. The fear was that I didn’t know enough about SVB to be able to continue with it. It is only by experimenting with SVB that you can find out more about it and not be afraid. Really, with SVB there is nothing to be afraid of, but with NVB there is nothing but fear. Avoiding NVB is like leaving your fear behind. You cannot handle that unless you know enough about SVB to be able to maintain it. I have left my fear behind and I live only to have SVB.

Let me talk with you about my fearless life. I have lost many jobs, I have been rejected millions of times, I have failed in so many ways……. What more do you need to know? It is due to all my problems that I was able to understand SVB. Bless you when you are having problems as you are getting closer to understanding SVB than those who still pretend not to have any problems. SVB is about the reality. You may not be good at describing the reality, but it is possible to get better at it. An accurate and meaningful description will result into a happy and fulfilled life. If your life is fulfilled, you must be having SVB, but if it isn’t, you can be sure you are continuously trapped by NVB. Most likely your life isn’t fulfilled. I don’t say this to upset you. I say this as I have learned from the thousands of people I have talked with. SVB doesn’t come cheap. We all go through suffering, but few of us suffer consciously enough to be able to leave it behind. I don’t want you to suffer, but you make yourself suffer as long as you don’t acknowledge and explore SVB. 

Although we are all in the same boat, we cause our own suffering by constantly engaging in NVB. We don’t know that NVB is nothing but suffering as it was never contrasted with SVB. We all think NVB is noble and meaningful and inspiring, while in reality it is stupid, meaningless and draining. We can only leave it behind if we experience it as such, but if we still think it has something to offer, we will continue our stupidity. Let me talk with you directly, my dear reader. This writing is meant to make you listen to your voice. Are you reading out loud and listening to your voice? I am glad if you do, but frankly, I don’t care if you don’t. I don’t care as you yourself should care. How could I care in your place? I can’t digest your food, I can’t breathe your air, I can’t be your voice. It makes no sense for anyone to remain busy with anyone else as that preoccupation can never result into an increase of SVB. 

If you are going to learn SVB, you will have to stop being busy with anyone else but yourself. You may not like to hear that, but well, that’s just too damn bad. There is no other way of learning more about SVB than by being conscious about yourself, but because of NVB you have remained unconscious about yourself. Most importantly, you have remained unaware about your impact as a speaker on the listener. You have pushed people around, but you haven’t really talked with them. Or you have been pushed around yourself so many times that you think there isn’t anything else. Your delusion is because of how others have talked with you. They made you believe that NVB is communication, but it is not. Once you have SVB you know there is no way back to NVB.

Your orientation is toward NVB as you have been conditioned by it. The only way in which this is going to change is when you are in a situation which will condition SVB. Such a situation can only be created if you listen to yourself while you speak. So, my advice to you is: don’t listen to what someone else is saying, but listen to yourself. Other-listening prevents self-listening. You were conditioned to listen to others, to authority outside yourself, but not to yourself. In SVB, on the other hand, you will listen to yourself as it will be possible for you to do so.  

SVB will bring out many new behaviors. It does that as it can do that. NVB only brings out more of the same. It does that as it is the only thing it is capable of doing. Your old communication style is only capable of producing more of the same old bullshit. If you give SVB a try you will know that this is so. If you listen to your sound while you read these words you will know that it is true. I am not trying to please you. You will please yourself and you will please others when you listen to yourself while you speak. There is another way of life, but it only will reveal itself if you recognize the big difference between SVB and NVB. This difference will make your preference clear: you will choose SVB.