On conditioned whumpees...
Y'know, I think one of the things that people get wrong with conditioned whumpees is their rules. Specifically, when a whumpee was in long term captivity/training and they later get released or escape.
Most people write them as latching onto a caretaker or new whumper, and begging for new rules so they know they're doing something right. A new set of laws to live by, a new framework to behave to.
And that's... not really how conditioning works.
Conditioning means automatic reactions. Your body doing something that was trained into you without consulting your brain first.
There is no decision making. There is no choice. The trigger hits, and you are immediately performing the correct action regardless of anything else.
You're told to kneel? Your knees have already hit the ground. You're supposed to be standing in one part of the house when you hear the front door open? You've launched into movement before you even realize what you heard.
These rules are woven into the fabric of your body. They are insurmountable. The conditioning overrides emotion, internal conflict, hesitation, beliefs, wants... everything.
Your whumpee may very well hate what is being done to them, and after the moment has passed they'll be cursing themself and their whumper. They're still a person on the inside. That person is still very much alive. Most of the time, they will have some level of awareness that what's being done to them is wrong. They'll be angry. They'll be hurt. They will hate that there is nothing they can do about it.
But the next time that trigger occurs, the response still hits them exactly the same.
So now take your whumpee out of that situation. They ran away, were rescued, were sold. They got out. Now they're with new people, a new caretaker, a new whumper. Or they're on their own and trying to make their own way in the world.
But those conditioned responses are still there.
There's no turning them off. You don't just replace them with new rules. They have been built into the very framework of who you are.
The next time someone says the word "kneel", your knees are on the ground again. No matter where you are, or who you're with. The response happens before you can stop it. If they don't know why, everyone looks at you like you're insane.
Deconditioning is an agonizing process that takes more effort than I can even begin to describe to someone who's never experienced it.
Every time they hit that trigger, that response will still be there. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over.
Breaking those rules down takes YEARS. It is a constant effort that the whumpee has to choose to undergo every single time. Progress is measured milimeter by milimeter. You're told to kneel, and you kneel. You're told to kneel, and your mind catches up with the fact that you already did it— but a little sooner than it did before. Then a split second sooner. Then as you're doing it. Then you feel the impulse just before your knees hit the ground. Then you have a split-second of resistance before you go down. On and on and on and on, inching toward progress despite the fact that you're fighting with all your might.
Worse? Progress is anything but linear.
You don't just start obeying new rules. You don't latch on to your caretaker's new way of doing things and drop everything that you were conditioned to do before. These rules don't just get replaced.
Conditioning is not a belief system. It's a flinch response. Programmed deeper than the instincts you were born with.
You can be ordered not to obey the old command, and moments later when the trigger comes, you will anyway. Because in conditioning, the action comes before the choice.
These rules, these laws of your existence, come above everything else. If your new whumper wants to replace them, they are going to have to beat the new rules into you so often and so severely that the pain becomes stronger than the old conditioning. At that point, the newly desired response will very, very slowly start to take over.
You're not swapping out new rules. You're layering new, worse conditioning on top of the old. Your brain will spend time stuck in that split-second between both responses before one finally grows stronger than the other. Even then, the change will not happen quickly.
That is what your conditioned whumpee is up against. That is what makes it such a horrible—HORRIBLE— and powerful tool.
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