The conditioning is in what was never said
Little children read the room constantly. They see their mother's face tensing up over dinner. They feel their father pulling his energy back because he's upset and doesn't want to explode in front of the family. They don't absorb it through the mind. They absorb it through their senses, their heart and their nervous system.
And then they adapt. Oh, I don't like it when my mother's face tenses up. What can I do so it doesn't happen again? I don't like it when my father detaches like that. How can I change myself so it doesn't happen anymore?
We all know the obvious forms of conditioning, the punishments and the shoulds. But most of it is a slow burn, made of moments like these, the ones that happen between the lines.
Love and conditioning can coexist.
You can love your child dearly, with your whole being. And because you love them so much, you don't want to pass along your anxiety, your anger, your sadness, your frustration with life. Maybe the feeling that you wasted your life. So you hide it. You put on a big smile and pretend everything is perfect.
But the child feels everything.
A client of mine, I'll call her Nora, grew up with a mother who wanted to be seen as the funny one, and she was. Loud, generous, the kind of woman who threw huge birthday parties and made up lullabies Nora still knows by heart. When I asked Nora what her mother was hiding behind all that, she answered right away: suffering.
Her father was never there. Her mother told the story well, she wanted a child and she had one on her own, and Nora grew up believing she never missed him. When I asked what her father was hiding, she paused. "Me."
None of it was ever spoken, but the subtone was broadcast, potently and invisibly.
In one session, she went back to a hotel pool on a family holiday. She was seven, spinning underwater, immersed in her joy. She wanted her mother to see. Mom, look at me. Mom, watch my handstand. Her mother, sitting by the pool with a drink, didn't look. When I asked little Nora what she decided in that moment, she didn't hesitate. With an air of revenge, she said: "I won't need you. I won't bother you anymore. I'll take care of myself."
Today she packs for every trip so she never has to ask anyone for anything. She has wanted for years to ask friends for help, and she doesn't, because people are busy and she isn't sure she deserves their time. Nobody ever told her not to need. She learned it by the pool, and probably many other times before that.
It shows up in many other ways too. Nora takes care of everyone before herself. In a group, she barely speaks. Leaving has always been easy. It probably looks very different for you. But somewhere, there's something you do every day that you never decided to do.
I don't want to villainize conditioning. It happens whether you want it or not. What we see of ourselves is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a whole world under the water that we can't see. Our shame, our fears, our unfinished grief, the needs nobody met, the beliefs we inherited, to name a few. And deeper still, our parents' unconscious and the collective unconscious, things we don't even know exist, running in us like a system underwater.
The gifts pass between the lines too.
A mother whose temper filled the whole house might pass down the fire to stand up for yourself. A father who never once raised his voice, not even for himself, can leave behind unconditional love. When Nora imagined her mother at her best, she named what she had inherited right away: funny, wild and free. The same mother who didn't look at the pool, and so often didn't look at all.
Our responsibility as adults is to go explore that realm for ourselves, and to finally say what was never said. When Nora went back to the little girl by the pool, she didn't make her any promises. She just asked her the simplest thing: "You look sad. Are you okay?" Then she told her that her handstands were beautiful, that she swam like a little dolphin, and asked if she wanted to go swimming together. And then Nora cried. Years of tears.
So the question isn't whether you were conditioned. You were. The question is what was never said in your house. Because those things are still running the show, for as long as you choose not to look at them.
