Musings on Recovery from Self-Abandonment Conditioning

What kind of people

Condition you to feel and act small? Why do you think they do that? What do you think they are feeling/ thinking that motivates that?

The early conditioning not only behaviorally pushes us to silence, slouch. It conditions us to worry about what others might be thinking/feeling in reference to us and we contort to try and gain some semblance of sense of control facilitative of peace.

So we are over observing, contorting, making ourselves smaller constantly, associated with a deep sense of need for safety aka peace.

But what do these conditioned survival behaviors actually produce in our life? Exhaustion, tough relationships, burnout, self questioning, over thinking, anxiety, depression, isolation.

Where did these behaviors come from? From people going through xyz reacting to their own hurts that they operate in response to, which they never recognized or addressed. Previous options looked like avoiding/ignoring it, succumbing to suffering, or becoming the same as the source that conditioned you.

We all have parallel patterns- the side of hurt, and the side of response to hurt. Our hurts may differ just as much as our responses differ, but we all have that same hurt/response pattern. What makes our own unique is the way we relate to the hurts, and what that breeds in our response.

If for example, you felt oppressed by another as a child and felt the need to make yourself smaller to warrant less attention, monitor the emotional tones of the room and anticipate everything, you may have related to that pain by now with either continuing to behave that way, or becoming more of the opposite (the oppressor), in an attempt to protect yourself against in response to the conditioned behavior pattern of constantly monitoring the emotional tones of your relationships.

In all of this we need to see our innocence- we are wired to survive and how we automatically synthesize pain from our environments based on their context serves a survival purpose. We can reframe from here into "I am so glad to become aware of all of this, now I can do something about it, I can begin to choose my responses." We give safe, reasonable compassion and leadership to ourselves.

So what if you could break the foundational link in the chain by recognizing that it was never your cross to bear? What if you could start experimenting with who you want to be by exploring who you really are- the different facets of you- the ones that hid behind fear- moment by moment: in conversations, muscle strain and posture issues from tension, missed events, boundary violations, self blame, undue internalizations of shame.

Get to know yourself. This includes pushing yourself through fear, over and over again in different contexts. You have to know your "why." You have to believe in the purpose and plan for what you are doing.

Seek and identify the purpose, then develop the plan. Plan for difficulty, so you are primed to treat yourself kindly and lead yourself through it well. When you falter be prepared to reframe it in the moments, as part of the process to build acceptance and resiliency during difficult moments. Then begin to look around as you move into the reframe and find information in moments that confirms the fluidity of the process. Look for positive indicators that you are heading in a right and good direction, one that is supportive of your goals in experiencing well being.

This all leads to ending a foundational conditioning program and beginning a new one, consciously curated by you and the spirit of truth.