I've been meaning to talk about conditioning for a while and as it is coming up a lot in my client work at the moment, this seemed like a good time.
We are often so bound up in our conditioning that we don't even know it has happened, that it is happening and how it affects us.
By conditioning I mean the subtle, and often not so subtle, information, clues and ways that we learn to behave in our childhood to get our needs met. Needs such as love, care, attention, safety and many others. If we don't have emotionally present parents, we are likely to miss learning how to understand our needs, how to ask for them to be met and how to receive whatever it is we need. Instead we subconsciously learn how to manipulate our caregivers in the hope they will give us what we need. For me that was people-pleasing and being the "good girl".
My conditioning really showed up in my career as a lawyer, particularly in the early days, when I played the game of working hard and partying hard which I understood to be necessary if I wanted a job. How many other unwritten rules do we follow, or games do we play because we feel we have to? We often don't know where the conditioning started or where it came from and it takes courage (and support sometimes) to go against the rules, to fly in the face of what we have learned to be true. It can feel lonely and unsafe at times but there is great freedom and joy on the other side.
Is there anything you might do differently after listening to this episode? Something you might stop doing? Or start something new? Let me know, I really want to hear from you.
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Production: Jay Herbert
Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware
