Pavlov Had It Wrong

Good morning, Cadre family doctor Carey here. I was just fixing my hair in the camera here. You know when you turn a camera on your face and you're like, oh, my gosh, I have got the worst hair day going on. But anyway, that's beside the point. So good morning. Thanks for joining me on this live stream. I have been working with a dog trainer for several weeks now, and this dog trainer is the best I've ever found. They very much understand dog psychology and how dogs are wired, especially a breed like mine who's very strong willed and incredibly intelligent and just decides when she wants to behave and not behave.

So we need to train her to understand that I'm the boss and I want her to act a certain way. So we were at the park and doing some, like, long leash training. So the point of this training is actually to set up your dog to fail. And I was a little surprised because I hadn't done this with the trainer yet. And I was like, what do you mean, you want me to set her up to fail? And she's like, well, I want you to be able to train the dog that this is the behavior you don't want to see. And this is the behavior you do want to see.

So how this went down is she wears an e collar which provides, like, this tiny little pinch when I press a button and that says, like, don't do that. I don't want you to do that. So the dog knows, oh, gosh, that wasn't something I should do. And then tons and tons of praise when they come to you and look at you and get lots and lots of treats so that I'm reinforcing the behavior I do want to see. So it's a combination of negative and positive reinforcement. And we're not here to discuss what your philosophies are on dog training.

Just know that this is working exceptionally well for my dog. She's a brand new dog with this kind of training, so that'll be a topic for another day. But anyway, so what I did was I had to create a distraction for her to, like, kind of run away from me. And the point of doing this exercise is to learn that, like, when you hear my, when I call your name to my dog and say, reese, come, that she immediately turns her head around and comes to me. So, like, if she's, like, far away or if she's entering into something dangerous, then I can immediately say that and she knows immediately I'm supposed to come running to mom.

And so I create a distraction. I've got her on a long leash, so it's safe. We're at a park, and I threw a ball, and that's like, ooh, that's fun. I want to go get that. So she starts to run after it. I press the button to create that little pinching sensation on her neck, and she immediately turns her head around and I say, reese, come. And then I don't keep pressing this button. She comes running towards me. She gets tons of. Tons of praise, and she goes, wow. Every time mom says, rhys, come and I come running, I get so much praise.

And I shouldn't even worry about that ball over there because that was not fun when I was running after that ball lunch and I got that icky sensation. So anyway, it was a fascinating exercise because this is how dogs are conditioned to behave, right? Like, we give them a negative reinforcement for a behavior and a positive reinforcement, conditioning them to behave a certain way, and we're setting them up to fail in this training environment so that we can then achieve the goal of getting her to respond a certain way.

So that's dog conditioning for you. But as I was reflecting on this of, like, gosh, does that mean that I, like, set her up to fail? And I even asked the dog trainer that she goes, well, think about this. You have a much higher setting on your e collar, and you could be pressing that, which is actually kind of painful, or she could be getting into something dangerous. So what you're doing is giving them just this little bit of notice of, hey, don't behave that way because I need you to act this way.

And it's much less detrimental than having to, like, use a painful stimuli when she's running out in the middle of the street or she's not coming back and she's going to get hurt. So it's like, kind actually to the dog to train them using this little bit of uncomfortability so you get the behavior that you want. So, that being said, long story short, I was reflecting on this and thinking, well, this is fascinating how it works for dogs, but does this work on people? Can we use the same conditioning on people?

And then I realized, oh, my gosh, I do this. And I think a lot of us do this kind of conditioning with other human beings, and we are not wired like dogs. We are wired very differently than dogs. But if you think about it, we do set up people to fail a lot, whether it be like, I'll give you an example. If I have been hurt by men over and over and over in my life, and let's say I've been cheated on by multiple men in relationships. The next relationship I get into, I'm almost expecting I'm going to be cheated on, right?

Like I've conditioned myself to believe that this is what happens in relationships. Or let's say I'm in business discussions and I have constantly been screwed over by people in business. And the next time I enter in a conversation with someone, I'm almost expecting they're going to screw me over because I have been conditioned to think that that's just what happens. Whether you're consciously thinking that or not, it might be very subconscious, but we have kind of this expectation of how other human beings are going to respond to us.

And in codependent relationships, this actually becomes the norm because you're expecting people to respond a certain way. So you almost start to manipulate how you phrase things. You manipulate how you say something to your significant other or in other, you know, relationships in your life. It doesn't have to just be a significant other with codependency. And you manipulate how you say something because you're like, I bet if I say it this way, they're going to respond that way. And then when they do, then you go, aha, see, I caught you and I knew you were going to do that.

And you get all nasty and p***** off and because you've literally conditioned their response based on what you've even said and how you've said it. So we do this all the time, and it is kind of human nature, unfortunately. But I would encourage you to think about what relationships do I possibly do that in? And then I want to dive into just really briefly. I know we're getting long here on the expectations versus hopes in relationships, and I could do a whole nother video on this. If you expect people to act a certain way, they are always, probably always going to fail.

They are going to miss the mark because you have an expectation. They can't ever really live up to it, especially if they don't know what your expectation is. So you are going to be disappointed every time or almost every time. And we do this a lot with people that we're familiar with. We're like, gosh, I would really expect my family to start acting better at family gatherings or whatever it may be, and you end up disappointed because you have this, like, expectation that they're supposed to act a certain way, but they're just going to be themselves.

And so I want you to think about how you can change that expectation into hope. I can hope they respond or act a certain way, but I'm not going to put an expectation on them that is going to just leave me disappointed in the end. So, gosh, I'm going to really hope that they show up differently today. I really am. And if they disappoint me again, they disappoint me again, I'm going to show up as the best version of myself and do my best and I'm going to just leave the outcome of how they show up on them.

And that is how you break the codependent pattern in relationships. So I'm just going to check in. The comments here can also lead to bias. Luke? Oh, yes. Totally. Yeah. When you have this expectation of how people are supposed to respond or this, like setting them up to failure, you can really have a bias in your mind of like, I'm going to expect they're going to do this, this and this, and then you have a bias and you can have stereotypes and judgment coming through, how you communicate and everything.

Like Luke said the other day, wearing a white shirt is challenging with some of the white comments on my screen. It also has conditioned you to fear failure. Yes. Jungfu junkie. That is so true. So, so true. If you like fear, you're going to mess up. If you fear that things aren't going to go through, let's say it's a business thing and you constantly are getting screwed over, like you're going to have a fear develop inside of you and then you're going to operate out of that fear and you're not going to show up as your best self.

So I hope this was insightful, helpful hope give you a little bit of time to reflect on it. It definitely gave me some time. I've done a lot of work in this, but I gave me more time after I worked with my dog the other day that I, I can't be setting up other humans to fail like I do my dog to condition a certain behavior. So I hope it was helpful for you guys. Thank you for tuning in with me. Have a fantastic Tuesday. Stay tuned for our livestream from Jill and Mary this afternoon and just check out the rest of them this week.

We have a great lineup for you. Have an incredible week. Love you all. God bless it. You.