What, of all that you've been conditioned to do, do you still do?

All of us have been socially conditioned in one way or another and all of us have de-conditioned ourselves as we learned what works and what doesn’t, in our lives, for our personalities…Some socialization is hard to break, though and out of needing to fit in or to be left alone or to be safe, we perform, act, think in ways that we’ve been conditioned to because of our religions, childhoods, pains and aches and experiences…

What are some of your knee jerk reactions even though you know better? Some examples for me include

1. Shaving my legs when I know I don’t need to or want to because I don’t want ignorant people or patients of mine to make comments at work or on my way to work – this shouldn’t be the focus of anyone’s but I’ve experienced these responses before and so I shave, sometimes, in order to get through the summer.

2. I get angry at my mother after over 10 years of tension even though I know it’s futile and same shit different day – she still gets to me and the logical side of me can’t understand why but the emotional side of me wins out on this one because I don’t understand how she still dares to criticize me after all that I’ve been through, after becoming a mother twice, etc.

3. Qualifying certain things about my sexuality or feeling about gender in terms of my relationship – how can you be queer, Simone, when you’re married? so you can’t cook at all? how do you people eat? what do you mean your husband stays at home – you must have been really desperate?...and since I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with these people who aren’t important to me, then I do the giggle and the whole ‘well..it works for us and x, y, z..’ when really I should just not entertain their crap but sometimes (well, all the time, this is what society is about) you want to just get through the evening and your ‘weird’ relationship is not the focus and you don’t need everyone in the room to stop talking and turn their heads (subtle much?!) to listen to yourself explain things…I just hate that sometimes I give in…

4. Sometimes dumb people yell ‘faggot’ at people on the train and I don’t say anything because I don’t feel safe enough to do that and even though I know better, I stay quiet because I don’t want to ‘get into it’. I need to be more outspoken, more than I am already and I fail myself every time I do this…I am conditioned to sometimes think of myself first and my comfort…