November 14, 2013

November,14, 2013

Dear Reader, 

Turning away from my negative covert self-talk, is the best kind of passive avoidance behavior I can achieve. I haven’t been able to turn away from my negative self-talk, because I was trying to make my private speech part of my public speech. The only signals that I have been looking for were those that were telling me whether I could talk with someone or not. Although people gave me the signal that they were willing to talk, I found out that this was often not the case. I responded to their signal, but did not notice their the other signals, which must have been there as well. There must have been other signals, which I ignored or did not notice. These signals are now becoming noticeable when I hear a noxious stimulus from which I used to escape.

Because of my respondent or involuntary behaviors, my operant behaviors, such as detecting and avoiding the aforementioned negative stimuli, could never fully develop. This isn’t surprising if I take into consideration the environment that gave rise to these autonomic fight/flight responses. The punitive presence of my father was such that escape was only possible for me by getting out of the house. As a kid, I was always playing outside on the street. Inside, my room was my only escape, but, unlike my mother, my father would force his way in. One incident comes to mind, in which I locked myself in my room. My father banged loudly on the door. He screamed and threatened to break the door. I don’t know how often I was hit, but it must have been many times. I still fear being hit. 

My fear of being hurt led to an emotional response in situations when a rational response would have  been more appropriate. My ability to rationally respond is limited by how my nervous system was conditioned. Is it possible to recondition my reflexive responses to a threat? Each time I responded in an emotional manner it had negative consequences. I tried to change and avoid these consequences, but even today I find myself incapable of it. Lately, instead of fleeing, I defend myself, but fighting back still makes me emotional. Instead of avoiding I have learned to stay in the situation. I have gained some success and confidence from my approach behavior and by assertively pushing back. 

 

I now need to ease into my approach behavior, so that I can increase my avoidance behaviors. I need to get better at responding to signs which allow me to avoid threat of social disqualification.  I need to know what these signs are. They are not approval. Approval is a set up for failure. By paying attention to safety signals, I keep in touch with persons who are a potential threat to me. This is not done by trying to get something out of them or by getting them to do things for me. By appeasing them, by keeping them calm and by giving them my positive attention, I succeed. It is not an approach behavior. It is primarily an avoidance behavior, to be nice to them and to play along.  

I want to say something else about my incapability of preventing emotional reflexive behavior. I have gotten better at it, much better, but under stressful circumstances it remains an issue. Stressful circumstances are evidence of not enough or no effective avoidance behavior. They should have been prevented to begin with, but they weren’t. Why weren’t they prevented? Because I was not aware I was getting stressed. I should be extra careful under such circumstances. The incident due to which I got stressed out was very straightforward: I lost a credit card and I locked myself out of my car. Such alarming signals should have alerted me to step on the breaks for any type of approach behavior.