8/6/2019 Article - Conditioning
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Uday Stress Book independent Articles
Conditioning
- Uday
Natural fears are inborn, not learned. As babies, we
instinctively tense up at the loud noise of crackersbursting. We
respond to our caretakers absence with fear of abandonment. We
respond to our parents
angry voice with fight or flight response. Fear is a natural and
healthy response to threats to our life
and limb. Fear is wired into our DNAs.
However, most of our fears are learned fears. Fear of darkness,
fear of falling, fear of getting burnt, fear
of insects, fear of crowds we are not born with these. These
fears are picked up over time we learnt
to fear them by experiencing the consequences like being lost,
injuring a leg, burning a finger, gettingstung, or getting hurt in
a fight.
Conditioned fear is learned and inculcated. As children we
learnt to fear the cane for cane wasassociated with canings that
came as punishment for our wrong doing. We learned the fear of
exams
for exams were associated with failure and unpleasant
consequences. We learn to fear policemen andbosses for the same
reason by associating them with authoritarian parental figures.
They remind us of
the threatening father or mother whom we were afraid of as
children.
Conditioning also occurs by observing others behaviours. Many of
my fears have come about byobserving and copying my parents
behaviours. My social anxiety, fear of crowds, fear of
darkness,
were reinforced by watching my mother respond to such
situations. Conditioned behaviour becomes
extremely powerful because it is continuously reinforced by
experience and example. We grow up withour fears until they becomes
second nature to us - we become one with our fears.
Conditioning is further reinforced by many of our beliefs that
are self fulfilling. Many of our beliefs are
a product of conditioning, for instance, Do not trust or talk to
strangers
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and Do not argue with your superiors generally are messages that
have become self fulfilling. The
more we believe, the more we avoid strangers or submit to the
boss, and cause our expectations to
come true. To complete the picture are the corresponding beliefs
that the strangers or bosses have about
us! We fulfil each others expectations and reinforce the
conditioning.
Conditioning have its positive merits and negative side.
Conditioned thinking sidelines our conscious
logical thinking and allows us to respond to situations
instantly. This is especially useful when we do
not have the time to think out the steps, and our safety or
comfort depends upon our instant response.Martial arts and sports
education conditions us to respond with discipline and quick
reflexes. School
education conditions us to obedience. Our culture conditions us
to identify with our roots and
community. All this behaviours becomes integral parts of our
personality.
However, conditioning makes us respond in one way to many
diverse situations and is not necessarily
the necessary response required. We may act too aggressively or
too timidly and create problems ratherthan solving them. If we
experience more problems than satisfaction in our dealings with the
world, it
means that we are relying more on our conditioned thinking
rather than using our learning mind toprocess changing
situations.
We can use the learning mind to look into what goes into our
conditioned thinking. We can process the
logic on which our responses are based. Our learning mind acts
as a counterbalance to our automaticthinking, and helps us arrive
at better responses. We can identify helpful and unhelpful
behaviours and
choose to act more thoughtfully wherever necessary. We can also
look into the logic of the problematic
behaviours and replace it with well reasoned logic.
Most of our conditioned beliefs are based on childhood logic
which is limited at best and fancifullyunrealistic at worst. As
adults, we can learn and subscribe to realistic and helpful
thinking. We can
motivate ourselves to move out of past ways of thinking and
behaviour. We can do problem solving
using our creative faculties, and make commitments to change
through determination and will power.We can encourage ourselves to
emerge from disappointments and defeats by focusing on our
purpose.
We can use our adult awareness to take stock of situations and
our own capacities. We can trust
ourselves as adults to take necessary steps to act
appropriately.
As human beings, we have been wired to survive and thrive. We
have survived over a million years,
and have thrived and prospered. We are adult human beings,
capable of observing, learning,
understanding, thinking, deciding, acting. We have been handling
stress through decades, centuries,
and millenniums, as part of our routine that is called life. We
need not be prisoners of our conditionedthinking. Our destiny is
for us to choose.
