Pure behavioral programming is frequently created using conditioned stimulus-response training, like that used with Pavlov’s dogs. If a person does or says or hears or sees any of the programmed stimuli, they immediately react with the programmed response (such as self-injury, suicidal urges, binging and purging, starving, and acting out in therapy). However, breaking the behavioral link eventually makes the program stop working altogether.
We all know how Pavlov’s dogs were “programmed” to salivate when they hear a bell – but it is equally true that, if they stop getting food when the bell rings, then eventually they stop expecting it – and eventually their mind breaks the link between the ringing bell and food, and they don’t salivate in expectation anymore.
This works even better (faster) if the existing behavioral link is simultaneously reattached to a new expectation – ring a bell, and instead of getting food, the dogs get to go for a walk. It doesn’t take them long to stop salivating and start jumping around at the door instead.
So basically, undoing behavioral programming is more a case of reprogramming your mind with a new response to a given stimulus – replacing the programmed “food expectation” response with the new “go for a walk” response.
This works best if the new response chosen is something absorbing enough to serve as at least an adequate distraction, even from the beginning. Just as an example – taking an activity as emotionally addictive, compulsive, and habitual as self-injury and replacing it with watching CNN on television probably won’t be too effective – however, replacing self-injury with running or walking outside, going to the gym, cleaning the house, doing yardwork, shooting hoops in the driveway, shooting aliens in Halo, playing Wii tennis, playing real tennis, just smacking tennis balls agains the side of the house – anything you can do safely and regularly, something that suits you and caters to your interests and your needs, something that pulls you out of yourself and (ideally) moves you away from your location and tools of choice for self-injury, will give you a fair chance for success.
Of course, just offering an alternative won’t keep us from longing for the comfort of the familiar. Choosing an alternate activity to be our new response is easy – the hard part is to keep acting on the new response even when it seems futile and pointless and we’re sick of fighting and we’d rather just go back to the old way. This is especially true at the beginning of the process, when the programming has years’ worth of “obedience” reinforcing its strength and it is very very hard to resist.
Backsliding at the beginning of this process is not equivalent to failure – you have as many chances to make this work as you need, and it can take effort and practice just to build up the strength for a prolonged fight. You might progress in increments of hours, or even quarter hours – but progress is progress, and every step is a success.
Expecting overnight success, however, will lead to certain disappointment. The programming was created over decades. It is strong, and it is insistent, and we are used to doing what it tells us to do. It takes time and persistence to teach ourselves not to do those things. Like learning any new skill, but with the added disadvantage of having to overcome what we’ve already learned and then to learn the new thing instead.
Compare your mental memory to your physical (muscle) memory. Has anyone ever played a musical instrument where they had to break an old, incorrect habit in their playing? How long did it take before the old habit was finally eradicated? Ever driven a stick shift car and then gotten an automatic? How long did you continue to reach for the gear shift or press the clutch even when neither was necessary? Ever rearranged the furniture in a room and then had to readjust your course every time you walked into it for the next few weeks because your autopilot was still expecting the old arrangement?
But wouldn’t it be kind of ridiculous to get rid of your automatic car because you were still used to driving a stick shift, or moving the furniture in a room back to the old arrangement because you didn’t instantly adjust to the new one?
Well, learning new responses to old stimuli is the same way – and if we give up on trying to make it work because it doesn’t work fast enough, then it’s never going to work.
All new learning requires time. Habit is a really powerful thing – the number of things that physical and mental memories accomplish without our conscious thought is immense, and obedience to programming is a deeply rooted habit that all mind control victims were forced to learn. It is neither easy nor comfortable when a rote activity suddenly requires conscious awareness – as when we are learning a new way to do an old task – but it’s not going to happen any other way.
Learning doesn’t happen by magic. It happens through effort and application over time. Someone put a lot of time and effort into forcing us to learn their programming. They spent years teaching us what they wanted us to learn. I think we are worth at least as much of our own time and effort to learn what we want to learn.
