palominocorn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
palominocorn) wrote2021-10-27 09:09 pm
palominocorn) wrote2021-10-27 09:09 pm
(no subject)
Okay, here's my thesis statement: if you want people to stop a behavior, you have to figure out why they're doing it, and find a way to fill that need otherwise.
Shame doesn't work. Peer pressure doesn't work. Begging doesn't work. Threats don't work. Demonstrations of the consequences of their behavior don't work.
Shame doesn't work. Peer pressure doesn't work. Begging doesn't work. Threats don't work. Demonstrations of the consequences of their behavior don't work.
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Yeah, this tracks. I would also say that trying out demonstrating the consequences is a good place to start, because if the person doesn't change their behaviour afterwards, you can gauge by the consequences how important it is to provide a different option rather than trying to eliminate the problem.
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I will say that if someone who was like "you know that the level of drinking you're doing could get you kicked out of college and destroy your liver" during my youth then turned around and started asking "but why is it that you're drinking so much" I would not actually trust them with the answer.
IMO too many people jump to the "CONSEQUENCES!" tactic too quickly.
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I feel like it depends on the culture a lot -- nobody really told me why my worst behaviour was wrong, nobody really explained really basic stuff to me despite me asking "why" and instead treated my "why" as a default "no". I'd learned that rules were arbitrary and you followed rules to appease other people, but I was very adamant about doing things for myself on my own terms, and took other people telling me I needed to do something different as just more attempts to control me. (And some of them were! Some of them didn't give a shit about my wellbeing.)
My long-time schtick was to be really blatant to people about the consequences of their actions. I don't think it's even tough love because I didn't super care if they changed as a result and I had no interest in telling people how they should change because all control other people had exerted over me had only damaged me further. And sometimes it worked. And sometimes it didn't. And it never worked indefinitely. So "consequences" is not actually a solution, but I can't discount it as a part of the solution.
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I'm sorry that people did that to you. Not explaining things to you and defaulting to punishing you for asking questions was a serious failure on the part of the adults around you, and I'm not at all surprised that it significantly affected your future behaviors.
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That, or treating things as obvious and me as defiant or a moron for not grasping them intuitively, yes. And often only explaining to me that there is more to consider than my own limited perspective in the most condescending way possible after first letting me assume the issue was surface deep. Also, thank you.
I think the important bit here we're both getting at is that people don't do things for no reason. I'm coming at it from "someone who knows their reasons might lack the full picture of what the situation is" and you coming at it from "you can't offer solutions without first identifying what the problem is that the person is solving with their behaviour".
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