Automatic responses are a means to ensure survival.

For the last four years I have been training my once-wild mustang. One challenge we face is my mare’s sensitive flight response. She lived in the wild the first year of her life. In the wild, when there is a threat, the standard response is to run. Her mind was programmed, as a baby, to run from perceived danger. Running meant safety.

Running from every possible threat is a great strategy in the wild, but it doesn’t translate well in domestic life. Horses need to listen to their owners to maximize their safety in the human world. My mare’s programming or automatic response did not understand this once she left the wild. Because of her response, simply walking on the easements around our home was difficult. House after house has dogs confined in their yards. They come rushing towards the easement, barking as anything passes by their fence.

Barking dogs rushing at a horse programmed to run from danger is not a good combination.

Clicker training

With clicker training, commonly used with animals, you use a strong stimulus, usually food, to elicit or cue a particular behavior. Eventually, you extinguish the stimulus (food), so just a click elicits the desired response. This response becomes automatically associated with the clicker, or whatever other cue you might pair with a behavior.

I began using this with my mare. It worked miraculously. Using food almost completely extinguished her automatic response to run. Instead, she focused on me and the food she would get when she directed her attention towards me. Each and every time a dog barked or rushed at us, I would click and provide food. Soon, just a click would redirect her attention from danger and the need to run, to turning towards me.

After hours of work and practice, the click changed my mare’s automatic response from running, to instead directing her attention towards me.

Humans work in the same manner.

Through experiences, tendencies and reinforcement, we have developed automatic responses. Saying thank you when appropriate is a great automatic response. Lashing out in anger when we are hurt is not a good automatic response. As with horses, automatic responses are built in for our protection. We lash out in anger to try to avoid more pain. That is the script we have learned. Unfortunately, our automatic responses don’t always give us a good result.

As with horses, we can pair a strong enough stimulus, with a cue and change our automatic response. For humans, the greatest challenge is identifying a stimulus that provides enough motivation to change our automatic reaction. Automatic responses are ingrained into our functioning and hard to change.

A clear example can be seen with PTSD. A veteran home from war, hears a loud sound and automatically responds the way he was trained and which was necessary when he was in a war zone. He reacts and protects himself, moving into action. While the loud bang at home is from a different source then it would be in a war zone, their body and mind responds in the same way it did when they needed to protect their life.

Other automatic responses are not as dramatic, many simply reoccurring habits. Charles Duhigg discusses this very idea in his book The Power of Habit. One automatic response may be to eat when you are bored or stressed. Without even thinking you stick that candy bar sitting on you desk into your mouth.

The downside of automatic responses is that sometimes, it’s not how we want to respond.

The veteran home from war, does not want to respond to loud noises with instant fear and action. You don’t want eat a candy bar because you are stressed.

There are steps you can take to reprogram unwanted automatic responses.

First

Understand it takes time and effort. It will take much more time and effort to reprogram automatic responses than it will to simply continue life on autopilot.

Next

Identify your automatic response and what is triggering that response. With my mare, a sense of danger triggered her bolting. A child not responding may trigger her parent to yell. Once you have identified your automatic response and the cause of that response, you can begin to change it.

Now

You will need to find motivation strong enough to stop your automatic response in your tracks. A rubber band snapped on your wrist can snap you out of it. You can have a planned reward for yourself each time you interrupt the automatic response you wish to change. A picture in your pocket that you look at before you respond can remind you of your motivation. The hard thing with humans is that we don’t have a powerful stimulus that is as easy to identify as food is with animals. This is where creativity and work will be required for you to find what works.

Finally

Every time you identify your automatic response engaging, incorporate the stimulus to stop the behavior and then cue the new preferred behavior. For example, someone reacting to a loud sound with a fear response can heighten their awareness and carefully and consciously observe that they are home in a safe place. Once they have observed their safety, they can cue the new behavior–perhaps taking deep calming breaths. If you eat when stressed, keeping a reminder of your goal where you can see can motivate a changed response. Then when you feel the craving to eat, use that to cue a replacement response with a healthier habit such as writing in your journal or going on a walk.

When done correctly, you can remove the stimulus and cue your new automatic response using the cue from your old response.

Eventually, a barking dog will cue my mare to turn towards me instead of turning to run. A loud bang can cue deep breathing and relaxation. The yelling mother can use her child ignoring her to cue her to get down on the child’s level and clarify instructions and then supervise the desired behavior. When you are working to eat healthier, feelings of boredom can cue a break to journal or walk instead of eating.

Reprogramming your automatic responses is hard. It is more difficult and takes greater consciousness and more concerted effort than living on auto pilot, but the work pays off. New healthier responses create new healthier behaviors that benefit your life and the life of those around you. When reprogramming an automatic response to a better reaction, you can move forward in a good direction even while on autopilot.