Face Down Your Classical Conditioning

I first encountered the words Learned Helplessness when I read about a study carried out on dogs by Martin Seligmann and his colleagues in the 1960’s. The experiment was carried out in two main parts. In the first part, the dogs were shocked after they heard a bell ring. After doing this number of times the dogs reached a stage where they reacted to the shock before it even happened. The dogs were then put in a box with a divider. On one side the floor was electrified and on the other, it wasn’t. The dogs were shocked again but instead of jumping to the other side of the box they just lay down and accepted their faith. The experiment highlights the power of classical conditioning.

This study immediately struck a chord with me. Like the dogs, I have also gone through a classical conditioning process that I wasn’t aware of when I was living in the thick of it. As a result, I have drifted into this state of mind for large portions of my childhood and teenage years and I never knew what to do with it. 

It’s a feeling that washes over me when orders are given to me, often shouted at me, by an authority figure. I need to do what I’m told even if I have no idea why I am doing the thing or whether I feel like it or not. This may have been the hand reality dealt me as a child, but do my current behaviours as a grown adult belie that of a dog who is facing the prospect of jumping to the other side of the box but instead chooses to lie down and accept what he believes to be his faith instead?

First of all, doing something whether you feel like it or not isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I wouldn’t have built a podcast or wrote my first book if I only worked on them whenever I felt like it. In saying this, begrudgingly doing things that feel imposed on you is a different thing altogether. 

I’m not arguing that you shouldn’t help people when it feels like an obligation, this is quite a childish strategy and leads to a lot of unnecessary drama and unresolved conflict with other people. Instead, what I want to explore is where my own power lies in these situations and what is really going on for me on a feeling level when I feel like a victim? Am I attuned to myself in these moments or am I experiencing the same feelings I didn’t know what to do with as a child? Are my only options really either to say no or to begrudgingly say yes? Or is there a hidden option where my choice to help someone or not doesn’t come from my reaction to drowning in these overwhelming feelings?

Before I go any further, I want to contemplate the purpose of my feelings of guilt or resentment. Are they there to help me in some way or are they there to keep me in line and subjugate myself to others? These are simple questions that don’t have a clear answer to me right now, but up until this point in my life I have largely assumed that feelings of guilt or resentment were evidence of me being a bad person and evidence of me acting in a selfish way. But is this true? If this is not an objective truth then where did my reasoning even come from?

As an adult, these feelings and the perception they create for me aren’t helpful. I have learned over the years that I don’t have to accept these feelings as the reality of the situation I am faced with. I have also realised that assigning a very specific meaning to a feeling is rarely ever a good idea especially if it keeps me trapped in a vicious cycle.

Instead, I have learned to become a little more curious about these feelings. In the moment this is hard. These feelings are often very old, painful, heavy and feel very personal. I want to lash out so I can get some sort of sense of release from these emotions. The last thing I want to do is to allow the emotion to be there and even become curious about it. But not doing this almost feels like choosing to take these feelings as the truth of my situation and giving them permission to hijack me whenever they want. 

I also keep in mind that these feelings are master deceptors as they point the finger of blame at the situation or person I am faced with rather than the feeling that has distorted my perception. But blaming the situation keeps me stuck and when I am not stuck in these feelings I can clearly see that not everyone reacts the same as me when I am overcome with these emotions. 

I don’t have all the answers to this but I know that curiosity, self-forgiveness and personal accountability hold the answers that I am looking for. The good news is that the results of classical conditioning don’t have to be permanent for you and I, it’s not the objective reality we are faced with. The emotionally mature adult in you can now finally learn to soothe and take care of that inner child who needed help with the storm that was brewing inside. 

You can listen to the full episode here.