So now that we know about how to reinforce and when to reinforce, we can use that information to our advantage. What we want to do is weaken our harassers desire to weaken us, right? And to do that, we need to use a constant neutral reinforcement schedule. Okay? If all we ever do is respond to our harasser consistently 100% of the time, our situation will improve and the harasser will harass us less, even if we continue to reward them. All right, constant reinforcement weakens the behavior.

All right. So, to really make this work, though, we need to remove the reward and issue a neutral response 100% of the time, and that's going to both weaken the behavior and eliminate the reward, and that's gonna make the behavior to go away. Now to make this work, we have to give our bully these exact Same response every single time, not every once in a while, every single time. Unfortunately, we humans are not very consistent animals. And we all have a tendency to variable reinforcement, especially in the bullying dynamics. To make sure you understand how incredibly important it is to remain consistent when extinguishing a behavior.

I'm going to explain to you what happens when you variably reinforce your bully instead. And what happens is you strengthen your bullies resolve to bully you. It makes the bullying worse, not just a little bit worse, a lot worse. In fact, most of the escalation that occurs in harassment situations is because the victim tries to ignore the bully or harasser for a bit and when that doesn't get the bullying to stop, they start responding to the bully again. All right. So They try to ignore it doesn't work.

And then they start responding again. And then they try stopping again. And then they start again. That's the definition of variable reinforcement. It's the normal pattern we fall into with people who are abusive to us, is variable reinforcement. That makes things worse.

And I'm explain why. So consistency is critical. It isn't just that being consistent, we weaken the unwanted behavior. There's another more important reason why consistency matters. And that has to do with the blowout, the extinction burst of the blowout. Now, I mentioned that so I'm going to explain what exactly is happening when you variable read variably reinforce right?

So it's going to make it worse. Here's why. When we break any habit, we all go through an extinction burst. All right. And what that is, is an escalation of behavior. So let me give you an example.

You have a rat in a cage, it's got a lever when it presses lever, a little bit of food comes out, right and one day it presses a lever, nothing happens. What is it to? Well, it starts pressing the lever more, it tries to get its reward back, it presses lever more. And it keeps pressing that lever and keeps pressing until it's pressing it almost 100% of the time, it's trying to get its reward back. So when you look at my graph here, what you'll see is you have some level of behavior, the reward goes away, and you have an escalation of behavior and the behavior gets worse. Right?

Now, only if the reward does not come back, do we get to the extinction where the behavior kind of tails off? Right. Now, if, if at some point during this process, the lover started working again, what the rat will have learned is that I just need to press it like 25 times before I get my reward, and it's going to be perfectly willing to press this button 25 times to get its reward. All right. That's what it's learned, takes 25 times, press it and if the next time it takes 50, then it's learned it needs to press the lever 50 times to get this reward. If we're talking about a bullying, we've got some level of behavior that's happening.

The reward goes away. And the bullies escalates their behavior. And at some point before we get to extinction, or the victim starts rewarding accidentally, not intentionally, but they they do something that rewards the beleaguered what the bully just learned is I have to be extra special obnoxious to get my reward back and guess what they're willing to. Alright, and now your new level of normal is not the previous one. The new level of normal is whatever the level of activity was, when you started reinforcing them again. All right, and then the next time you try to extinguish the behavior, they're going to get even worse.

And then you're given and your new level of normal is this worse, new normal, right? This and then you never get to the extinction because you're you stop rewarding them, they get worse you get convinced they get a lot worse you get convinced this isn't working and you start trying something else and you end up in this variable. Sometimes you respond sometimes you don't pattern. And every time you do that, you make things worse and you make your new normal, worse, right, your your status quo becomes worse. All right? This dynamic is the main reason why it's so hard to get bullying and harassment and workplace bullying to stop.

When we apply this to bullies again, we see them doing some level of bullying, and we stop allowing them to get away with it, they escalate their behavior. And if we aren't consistent, and we give in before they complete their extinction process, we are left with a new norm, which is an escalated level of aggressive behavior. And this is why most people are convinced that efforts to get harassment to stop not only don't work they make things worse because They do make things worse, but only because the behavior process wasn't the behavior extinction process wasn't completed. We didn't get all the way to extinction. All we did was escalate the behavior without extinguishing it. All right.

What is happening is people are doing the right thing. They stop rewarding the bully. That's the easy, it's super easy to not reward a bully. The hard part is withstanding the barrage of their attempts to get you to respond again. So they neutrally reinforced this triggers the escalation. The extinction burst the harasser escalates their behavior.

And yes, retaliation is part of that. They're trying to get the reward back and their control back. But because the victim isn't a broken vending machine, they tend to respond again, if you're not aware that the escalation is evidence that what you're doing is actually working. You're gonna think it's not working because the behavior is getting worse not Better, and you're going to give up before the extinction process is complete. And then things will continue as they did before only worse because it's now at a more escalated level. Right?

This is why consistency through the once you start this process, it is critical you get yourself to the end of it. And you're consistent through this despite how hard it is. Because the alternative, the alternative is to make things worse for yourself. You either complete this process, or you make things worse for yourself. Once you start. All right.

We need to start telling people what to expect when they stop rewarding. Normally, we just said ignore them and they'll go away. That's not what we need to be doing. We need to remove the reward. We have to do so consistently through their escalation and attempts at retaliation until they stop. And they will stop eventually.

But just not right away. There's no way through. There's no way through the extinction process except through this extinction burst. Now you notice I call this a blow And the word is burst like an explosion. It's that bad. I'm not gonna lie to you and say, Oh, this is super easy.

Just do this. And it'll all be fine. No, it's hard. Right? experienced trainers consider the extinction process to be the hardest of the training techniques they offer and conditioning techniques to master. Because whenever you try it, the animal in question gets creative and gets more obnoxious and aggressive.

Right, and you have to know that that's going to happen, you have to understand what it is you're seeing when they do that, so that you don't give in so that you understand this is part of the process. It's hugely unpleasant. I can't even begin to tell you how unpleasant it is, but it's part of the process and there's no way from A to B except through this process, period. There is not this is going to happen. You're not going to get lucky. All right.

Before you start, you need to be prepared for what you're doing. You need to have a strategy to get yourself to the end. Otherwise, you're going to See what's happening. You're gonna make it worse for yourself.