Once again, we’d like to thank those who submitted their comments to us. We appreciated receiving them.

As we mentioned last week, we generally continue with behavior when we feel that it is providing some benefit. This is especially true regarding the behavior of living passively. 

There are many reasons why we continue to live passively. For example, we live passively:

• to gain acceptance and approval from others (50% of respondents from last week)
• to avoid confrontation and conflict (63% of respondents from last week)

Certainly, there are other reasons, but these are the most common.

To make positive change to unhealthy behaviors, once you have identified the WHY reasons for unhealthy behaviors, you’ll next want to understand the WHEN and HOW of these behaviors.

Remember, all automatic behaviors are learned. Once you learn them, they become habituated through the process of repetition and reinforcement. The more you do something, the more automatic it becomes. The saying, “practice makes perfect” is a good example of this.

To help you uncover the WHEN and HOW reasons for your learned passive behavior, here is an example from Hilary’s life:

Hilary grew up in an average family where both of her parents loved her. Her family wasn’t very well off, so her mom and dad worked long hours just to make ends meet. Consequently, Hillary didn’t interact with her mom and dad on a “less than formal” level very often. In fact, Hillary hardly spent any real “quality” time with them. Nevertheless, she accepted that her parents were doing their best.

Hillary’s father was very rigid. He definitely had HIS way of doing things. He frequently made it know to his family that his way was the ONLY WAY. Hillary’s father also yelled a lot, especially when he was stressed or angry. When any family member disagreed with his point of view, he became angry and boisterous.

One time, when Hillary was four years old, she tried to argue with her father. She quickly learned that the more she argued with him, the angrier he became. Their confrontation became explosive. Finally, in an angry rage, Hillary’s father hit and severely disciplined her.

Later, after her father calmed down, he did apologize to her for hitting her. He then went on to say that it was still her fault, and that she shouldn’t ever talk back to him again because he wasn’t EVER going to tolerate her rebellion. His parting words were, “Children should be seen and not heard.”

Naturally, as children will, Hillary tried to test his resolve on later occasions, but was quickly reminded that conflict with her father always ended badly for her. As a result, she learned it was better to be quiet and agreeable than to get into a conflict with him. Consequently, over time, the entire family learned to keep quiet, or else.

As Hillary grew up, she learned that this type of behavior worked for her. She learned that being nice kept life peaceful for her and her family. She later went on to apply this type of behavior to all of her relationships, hoping that they, too, would be peaceful, happy, and safe.

Hillary, now 43, still uses this behavior in spite of the many unhealthy relationships she’s had. She uses it because she learned at an early age that it “worked” for her then. Unfortunately, anxiety, a history of broken relationships, high stress, depression, and living an unhappy life haven’t convinced her that her passive behavior really “isn’t” working for her now.

For Hillary, she learned to live passively at a very early age because of the environment she grew up in. So, her WHEN started when she was four years old, and her HOW was because of her father’s rigid and dominant approach to life.

Certainly, there are a great many reasons why people learn to live passively. It is, though, important to understand your specific answers to the WHEN and HOW questions. Doing so will help you to “connect the dots” between why you live passively today and how it started. Understanding this will make it easier for you to move forward towards healthier living.

So, that’s your homework for this week. We’d like you to spend some time answering the following questions:

• WHEN did I learn to live passively?
  
• What were the factors in my life that taught me HOW to live passively?

See you next week.