So the other day I wrote this to T...and I wanted to share because I’m curious to see what y’all have to say about this...:P

“I had a thought earlier…so you know how I was describing how I was training [dog] by rewarding good behavior and ignoring bad behavior? You know, textbook operant conditioning stuff. Then I was realizing…that’s not too much different than what you did with me lol. Because basically, what you did is that you wouldn’t let me have what I wanted, aka talking to you, because of the behavior, so in operant conditioning world I believe that would be negative punishment (which I feel like comes with a negative connotation because of the nature of those two words, but I use it in a purely terminological way), i.e. taking away something away I wanted because you didn’t want to encourage the behavior. What I did with [dog] was a different subset, positive reinforcement, but it works the same, regardless. Because I guess the positive reinforcement today was that when I acted in an effective way, I got to talk to you. So basically, I learned that not only did I not get to talk about what was originally upsetting me, but also that all I really got myself was two days of misery and lost productivity for acting out, whereas I likely would’ve gotten to talk to you on Tuesday or Wednesday if I hadn’t acted out…so yes, I see the consequences to my own behavior…and yes I will think about that next time I consider doing this…and so yes, your tactic was effective…even though I was so, so angry and upset because of it yesterday…But what I was doing isn’t unlike what [dog] does when I leave. She acts out/throws a tantrum by barking incessantly (which unfortunately effects many people…), where as I threw my “adult” version of a temper tantrum by doing pretty much every self-destructive behavior I could conjure up in that time period. So yeah…I know what I did…I get why you did what you did…and although I didn’t like it at the time, it was effective. Because reward and punishment is easy to understand. Actually, if I remember correctly, it’s one of the earliest stages of cognitive development, being able to learn that way. But yeah…tangents aside…I learned that humans can be trained like dogs, and that therapy is pretty much a much more complex version of dog training…lol jk. It would be seriously great (and also not so great) if our minds were as simplistic as that of a dog. Too bad we have these things called association cortices, a limbic system, and god knows what else that are way more complex than that of a dog, and make us have complex abstract thoughts. I blame primarily the prefrontal cortex on this one.”