Conditioning Awareness Quick Guide
In psychology, conditioning is a trained response that arises from repeated patterns of reward and punishment. We are all vulnerable to conditioning by the people we work with and it may lead us to act in a way that compromises our ability to provide professional help.
Dangers of conditioning
- Favouritism
- Broken personal boundaries
- Unprofessional behaviour
- Emotional stress
- Isolation
How does it happen?
Usually, conditioning takes place over several interactions and takes time to develop. The person will alternately reward or punish your behaviours towards them in order to get what they want:
Rewards can take all sorts of forms including being extra nice to you, giving you gifts, doing favours, flattery, and being compliant when they are usually resistive.
Punishments could be things like shouting and intimidation, violence, ghosting, sulking, complaining, spreading rumours, self-harming.
Warning signs
Look out for:
- Being singled out as a favourite staff member (they only want to deal with you)
- Exclusivity (“we” are special)
- Crossing personal boundaries (if you feel your privacy invaded)
- Being asked to make exceptions or do something you should not
- Being frightened, intimidated or feeling threatened
- Taking the blame for things
- ‘Covering’ for someone
- Receiving inappropriate gifts
- Excessive out-of-hours contact – texts, phone calls
- Pet names
- Discussion of your personal affairs
- Excessive or inappropriate physical contact
- Guilting
- Feeling manipulated
- Borrowing, lending, giving or receiving money or other items
What to do
Some degree of conditioning is unavoidable; we inevitably hit it off better with some of the people we work with, we like to go the extra mile for people (which can be positive), we are empathically involved in people’s emotional lives and we are not automatons. The lines between ‘client’ and ‘friend’ can blur a little.
The power and danger of conditioning is that it isolates you from the rest of the team and it secures favourable treatment for an individual.
- Set clear boundaries – this means limiting the time you spend, the level of emotional disclosure, and the amount of access a person has to you
- Be accountable and keep the team updated – the worst thing is to keep a secret
- Ask for help from colleagues – bring other people in if the relationship is becoming exclusive
- Disclose any gifts or favours you receive
- Be wary of accepting gifts
- Watch out for each other and keep an atmosphere of healthy challenge with colleagues
- Appeal to the Handcrafted’s policies and agreements where relevant