To recap, in order to extinguish an unwanted behavior, you have to provide a neutral response, you have to remove the reward and respond in a neutral way. You have to be 100% consistent in your response, because if you are a variable, you put yourself back at square one, and you need to ride out the blow out extinction burst until the behavior is completely extinguished. Simple, right? Yeah, not Not really. All right, because when an animal blows out, they're escalating in their behavior. And the reason we call it a blowout is right before they give up, they throw everything they've got at it to get the reward back and part of the blowout behavior for humans is retaliation when we're talking about harassment.

Now, the good news is once you get to that point, you're nearly done. The bad news is it's really hard to remain firm at that point, but it's a lot easier to do if you understand what it is you're seeing and why this other person's behaving this way. Right. And I'm going to give you a quick little story I was interviewed for a reporter by a reporter up in Canada about a banker, leaving firm, who had sent an intern some really weird emails, in an attempt to get this woman to have sex with them. And he basically was saying the only reason he has interns is to have sex with them. And he was really abusive in these emails.

And the reporter was shocked by them. You know, like, Who in their right mind. That's what this man put into an email into an email and created a paper chain, write a paper trail of evidence. And the answer is someone who's experiencing an extinction burst. You need to understand that the bully or the harasser is going to escalate their paper to get their way and they're not necessarily in control of that. I mean, we like to think we're all rational people, but the reality is not so much right.

The blowout can be spectacular. It's easier to withstand when you're in Emotionally distant from it. And to get emotionally distant understand, it's not about you, you're not failing, you are triggering this, you are causing this by removing the reward. And you're going to allow this person either stops, or they will end up losing their job because they will blow out spit it, they will blow out spectacularly. Now, most people, and I get asked this a lot when I do trainings for companies, right? Most people are not like out of control abusers.

Most people, mostly what's happening in an office is you've got interpersonal dynamics that are playing out and maybe people have gotten into bad habits with one another. And they can readjust their behavior very quickly for one another when they remove the reward and they can talk through it and and do any number of these things. Right. It actually resolves itself very, very quickly. I did a program for a law firm and did this program for a law firm. And, you know, they reported it was a stunning, like just a dramatic change in behavior in the dynamics, the interpersonal dynamics in the workplace because people are Most people are able to adjust their behavior and stop doing things that don't work fairly quickly.

We're only talking about the people who are doing this really, habitually that aren't in control. This is those are the people that are going to blow out. Right? And there's really not a whole lot you can do to prevent them from doing that. If someone's gonna blow out spectacularly, they're gonna blow out spectacularly. And there's not a whole lot you can do to prevent them from doing that.

All you can do is not reward the bad behavior and set up the conditions for them to stop and they either stop or they don't and that's on them. All right. Just don't give in and don't take it personally when they're doing this. Just be prepared for it and document it and so forth as they they go through this. Alright.