Dog Training
Nov. 14th, 2025 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeBiff (who loves dogs) has a thing about dog training. When you have a dog that you’re training, you want to make sure you don’t teach it the wrong things. Dogs don’t speak English; they have to guess what you want, based on how you respond, and their reasoning isn’t the same as a human’s. Sometimes, you end up teaching the dog the wrong things, and y’all end up in a mutually self-defeating cycle.
As with dogs, so with ourselves.
Certain things, we LBers do not because we WANT to do them, exactly, but because we’re thinking in terms of dog training. For example, when certain politically awful things happen, it’s IMPERATIVE that we do something about the problem itself (ex: make sure a friend has food) and also do something about our stress reaction (go running, have a good rant/cry, whatever). We MUST NOT train helplessness and despair into ourselves! That doesn’t serve us! It ESPECIALLY doesn’t serve us when it’s clear that’s what our opponents want, because then THEY learn that this is how to get what they want, so THEY’LL KEEP DOING IT MORE. (Indeed, once a government learns that starving its citizenry WORKS, it’ll never not do that again. It’ll in fact whip that out more and more often, the more times it works!)
Once we started thinking in terms of “dog training,” we started changing how we treated ourselves and others. When someone in psych crisis started accusing us of atrocities via email, we knew they were harming themselves more than us... but also, we DID NOT want to teach this person that the way to get their needs met was to scream horrible things at strangers. So we told them that we didn’t allow others to treat us that way, we blocked their emails, and it was hard and painful... but it proved the right choice. We didn’t just teach THEM that screaming didn’t get them what they wanted; who knows if we actually did (we suspect that the lesson they chose instead was “see, everyone lets me down”). No, more importantly, we taught US that no, really, WE DIDN’T ALLOW OTHERS TO TREAT US THAT WAY. That lesson was really important! Just because someone’s in psychological crisis doesn’t mean we have to be a glowing bodhisattva of acceptance of all their behavior! It’s why we moved out of that apartment a couple years ago when one of the roomies decided we were “pedophile-adjacent”; we DID NOT want to teach ourselves that this was acceptable roommate behavior. We did not want to teach ourselves passivity and helplessness, that we just have to put up with stuff like that. We didn’t!
Both times, we were terrified that something terrible would happen because of what we did. In the first case, we worried the person would commit suicide like they were threatening to do, and we just had to deal with that. (They were hundreds of miles away and I knew neither their name nor address. There was nothing I could do to stop them, unless abusing an Internet stranger truly has the power to prevent suicide, which I doubt.) In the second case, indeed, my greatest fear came true: we lost our housing and had to pay double rent for seven months, a nosebleeding sum. But funnily, the reality was less awful than the anticipation. Losing our housing was extremely stressful... but there was power in treating ourselves like we mattered. It’s one thing to SAY, “you can’t treat us that way,” another to make it so someone CAN’T treat us that way.
How do we train ourselves? What do we teach ourselves about how others may treat us? How do we treat OURSELVES, not just in words, but in action? I have never been a fan of affirmations, because talk is cheap. Anyone can say, “I’m a strong independent person;” it’s another to BEHAVE that way, to teach yourself how to BE a strong independent person, which is a much longer, harder process. It’s the difference between the guy who blathers on about how buff and athletic he is, and the guy who maybe doesn’t say a word but does the reps and runs the laps.
Action trumps talk every time. When in doubt, ignore what someone’s saying and watch what they’re DOING. You know, like dogs do.
As with dogs, so with ourselves.
Certain things, we LBers do not because we WANT to do them, exactly, but because we’re thinking in terms of dog training. For example, when certain politically awful things happen, it’s IMPERATIVE that we do something about the problem itself (ex: make sure a friend has food) and also do something about our stress reaction (go running, have a good rant/cry, whatever). We MUST NOT train helplessness and despair into ourselves! That doesn’t serve us! It ESPECIALLY doesn’t serve us when it’s clear that’s what our opponents want, because then THEY learn that this is how to get what they want, so THEY’LL KEEP DOING IT MORE. (Indeed, once a government learns that starving its citizenry WORKS, it’ll never not do that again. It’ll in fact whip that out more and more often, the more times it works!)
Once we started thinking in terms of “dog training,” we started changing how we treated ourselves and others. When someone in psych crisis started accusing us of atrocities via email, we knew they were harming themselves more than us... but also, we DID NOT want to teach this person that the way to get their needs met was to scream horrible things at strangers. So we told them that we didn’t allow others to treat us that way, we blocked their emails, and it was hard and painful... but it proved the right choice. We didn’t just teach THEM that screaming didn’t get them what they wanted; who knows if we actually did (we suspect that the lesson they chose instead was “see, everyone lets me down”). No, more importantly, we taught US that no, really, WE DIDN’T ALLOW OTHERS TO TREAT US THAT WAY. That lesson was really important! Just because someone’s in psychological crisis doesn’t mean we have to be a glowing bodhisattva of acceptance of all their behavior! It’s why we moved out of that apartment a couple years ago when one of the roomies decided we were “pedophile-adjacent”; we DID NOT want to teach ourselves that this was acceptable roommate behavior. We did not want to teach ourselves passivity and helplessness, that we just have to put up with stuff like that. We didn’t!
Both times, we were terrified that something terrible would happen because of what we did. In the first case, we worried the person would commit suicide like they were threatening to do, and we just had to deal with that. (They were hundreds of miles away and I knew neither their name nor address. There was nothing I could do to stop them, unless abusing an Internet stranger truly has the power to prevent suicide, which I doubt.) In the second case, indeed, my greatest fear came true: we lost our housing and had to pay double rent for seven months, a nosebleeding sum. But funnily, the reality was less awful than the anticipation. Losing our housing was extremely stressful... but there was power in treating ourselves like we mattered. It’s one thing to SAY, “you can’t treat us that way,” another to make it so someone CAN’T treat us that way.
How do we train ourselves? What do we teach ourselves about how others may treat us? How do we treat OURSELVES, not just in words, but in action? I have never been a fan of affirmations, because talk is cheap. Anyone can say, “I’m a strong independent person;” it’s another to BEHAVE that way, to teach yourself how to BE a strong independent person, which is a much longer, harder process. It’s the difference between the guy who blathers on about how buff and athletic he is, and the guy who maybe doesn’t say a word but does the reps and runs the laps.
Action trumps talk every time. When in doubt, ignore what someone’s saying and watch what they’re DOING. You know, like dogs do.
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Date: 2025-11-28 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-29 03:17 pm (UTC)