Freeing Yourself From Conditioning
Why is conditioning so relevant to our lives? It drives emotions, thoughts and beliefs that affect our life outcomes.
Conditioning is a process where the outer world is ingested into the inner world of feelings in the body, and thoughts in the mind. We are conditioned by our experiences with our parents, school, media, and so on.
As children, conditioning adds layers of feelings and identities that go on top of our essential self, the self that we are more in touch with as children. The world is of course not a wholly innocent place — conditioning teaches us to survive relative to our circumstances.
Conditioning imprints deeply on us, so that patterns that served us before as children can often end up being dysfunctional when we are adults. These patterns could also be functional, but a sense of self-alienation can arise sometimes that contrasts with the everyday identities that we wear.
Conditioning by society is not really a conscious process, which means the harmful behaviours that we experienced are driven by unconscious processes that are acted out by others, and in turn, ourselves.
At the same time, the conscious minds of many adults will find the underlying impulses and these acted-out behaviours to be unacceptable in others, whilst justifying it for themselves or denying it. Which infuses feelings of guilt, doubt, shame and unworthiness into those others. Society is a hall of mirrors in this sense.
Before we move on to how to heal conditioning, here is a list of how conditioning can happen. Can you think of more?
- Manipulation by parents and peers — ‘do as I say, not as I do’
- Advertising — Our desires get linked to commercial products.
- Digesting templated formulas for ‘success’ by one’s parents, for example that one should also strive to be a doctor or lawyer.
- Rewards and punishments — We are like Pavlov’s dog; rewards and punishments from those that socialise us, get tied up with narratives. We internalise these actions and narratives, plus the resulting emotions.
- Trauma — A difficult experience can give a false-teaching of how we should behave, in many, the fact it happened can be felt, consciously or subconsciously, as our own fault. This is linked with shame and guilt.
- Indoctrination — This happens by degrees, in western schools it is a little more subtle (education is geared to material success, success = learning these subjects, in these ways), but in cults, for instance, it is more explicit, aggressive and dogmatic.
This process of conditioning is made all the more digestible by the innocence and open-mindedness of children. Children like to ask questions by nature, and if those questions are challenging to their parents or teachers, then a harsh treatment in some way gets dished out. In this way, children begin to adapt their behaviours to their environment.
Freeing Yourself From Conditioning
A quick reminder, emotions lie in the body, and thoughts are found in the mind. They are in a loop, so imprinted emotions cause thoughts, and thoughts cause emotions.
Take a moment to notice the patterns that you see in others and their potential causes, and quickly you will see how powerful conditioning is, and how it can be transmitted across generations. Harder though is turning the attention to yourself, but it is very possible and worthwhile.
Before we get to 5 ways to do deconditioning, here are the benefits:
- More positive emotions, less negative ones: the balance between positive and negative experiences will shift to be more enjoyable!
- More independence: you’ll be less driven by others in making your choices, these independent choices will be more sustainable and empowering for you.
- Less Fear: Trauma is like a wave-machine that creates turbulence in your day-to-day experience; getting in touch with your conditioning and fears dissolves it, and feelings of fear, lack and so on.
- Balance: A sense of balance will arise and tend to stay with you through more situations and periods of time. Things seem to flow more.
- Creativity: Conditioning creates boxes, and deconditioning stretches and breaks them. You will have more ingenious ideas and insights.
- Mind-body integration: Many people have lost awareness of their bodily states, which have something to tell us. Integrating the mind-body leads to the development of the self/self actualisation.
There’s more, but best to cut it short here! Here are 5 ways to begin deconditioning:
Map yourself
Make time to be still and relaxed, get into that state, and then query a difficult emotion or set of thoughts that you’re dealing with. How does it make you feel? Where does it come from? What can it teach you?
You may find that past experiences have created subtle beliefs and ingrained emotions in you and that they need not apply anymore. In mapping how you have become who you are internally, and not just externally, you can see through conditioning.
Meditation
Classic. There are many different meditation practices, but they have in common that they still the mind and give you a break from its commotion. Meditation cleanses the emotional body and can suddenly give insights that arise to teach you something new about yourself and the world.
Honesty-Time
Half of the deconditioning struggle is opening yourself up to the oft-difficult feelings and realisations that come out of being open and honest with yourself. Give yourself sincere permission, to be honest about your role in your life and situations, it won’t kill you 🙂
Journalling
Journalling lets you get your thoughts and feelings onto the page so that you can explore them. Something that helps the process is mindful breathing before doing it. Ask yourself questions, and give yourself honest permission to let the answers come out.
Give yourself new evidence
This means doing new things or learning things from others that challenge your established beliefs about yourself and about the world. It is nicely complemented by self-honesty, and in doing so, you can:
- Find empathy for others that you did not understand before, and this reflects back into empathy for yourself
- Make new connections via the mind, that cause changes in your emotions that are more open, accepting and loving.
- Find evidence that disproves the limiting beliefs or voices in your head, thus showing different realities are possible beyond the conditioning.
I hope this has been of help on your journey to becoming your best self! Here are a couple of related videos and articles related to this subject: