What Is Self Control – Really?

Self control is self management of behaviours. But that statement doesn’t cover the causes of the behaviours and what you really need to learn to control. You’re not controlling your own behaviours – you need to control the cause of the behaviours.

Self control is really about learning to control your emotions – your very instincts.

Behaviours are symptoms – the outcome of a problem. If you start screaming and yelling at your spouse – and then haul off and slap them? Do you understand what actually caused all of those behaviours? It’s the fact that the emotion/instinct of anger existed – and your behaviours are a direct result of your instinct of anger.

Now that you understand what caused the behaviour – what do you think you need to focus on? Why is the person angry in the first place – or shut down the behaviours as a result of the anger? A smack in the mouth can shut down the behaviours – but it doesn’t lead to any kind of understanding.

Your dog can get angry too – and the aggression is the behavioural outcome of that anger. If your dog is scared – they are dealing with emotions of anxiety or fear. That aggression and reactivity is the outcome of those emotions/instincts – fight or flight. Why are you focused on trying to fix or modify the behaviours?

You should be focused on helping the dog overcome the fear, the anxiety, the anger instead. Once you “fix” the fear, the anxiety, the anger – the behavioural outcomes of those instincts won’t need to exist. This is how “extinction” is really defined.

Trainers are trying to punish the behaviours into extinction – cause punishment attempts to remove the behaviour from the animals repertoire – make it go away. But it never does “go away” – it’s always there under the surface and it makes that animal unpredictable.

I honestly don’t care about the behaviours – I need to understand what is driving it. Why is the dog angry? Why is the dog scared? Why is the dog anxious? Now – replace dog with human. If the animal that you are is in a fear state – would you appreciate me shoving food in your face? Shocking you or pronging you? How would you feel if I suppressed or manipulated you while in a state of fear?

But the dog right… And people wonder why their dogs don’t want to be around them? They want nothing to do with you? The dog is a sentient animal – just like you are. If I treated my human friends the way you are being told by trainers to treat your dog? Nobody would want to be around me – nobody would want to be my friend. I would have to shock and prong them or manipulate them into staying with me.

And that by definition is Narcissism. You are the toxic environment – and your dog is the product of that toxic environment.

The very object of the science of behaviour is understanding its causes. And once you understand the causes of the behaviours – that is called diagnosis. Once you get a diagnosis – you’ve pinpointed exactly what needs to be fixed – now you have the knowledge to solve the puzzle. And as a result – putting the behaviours into extinction is relatively easy at that point.

Has a dog trainer or behaviourist ever talked to you about all this? About what’s actually causing the dogs behaviours? Or are they focused solely on shutting down the behaviours? Stopping the behaviours? Cause that is not only stupid – it’s downright dangerous to suppress behaviours in any animal.

It’s your emotions that drive all of your behaviours – but your emotions are also known as instincts. You’ve heard the phrase driven by instincts? Yep – that’s you too. And the dog and every other animal out there. We are all driven by instincts.