Good girl conditioning is the name many women give to three instructions they still follow without deciding to: be nice, be small, be easy. Each one tended to win approval, so each one stuck. This page looks at the habit, not at your values: gentleness and modesty are yours to keep, and so is any faith you hold. And if being agreeable is what keeps you safe from someone, your safety comes before anything here.
Seat 34E is a middle seat, and Oriane has her arms folded into her lap before the plane leaves the gate.
The passenger by the window has the armrest on her left. The passenger on the aisle has the one on her right, and asks, before take-off, whether a laptop bag could go under her seat, since there's no room left under theirs. "Of course," Oriane says. For the next six and a half hours her feet rest on top of it.
An hour out of Dubai, the trolley reaches her row. "Chicken or pasta?"
"Whichever's easier," she says, smiling, and she's handed the pasta. When an elbow from the window seat tips her water across the tray, she's the one who says sorry.
Later she opens her laptop as far as her elbows allow and goes through tomorrow's slides. At nine in the morning, in Frankfurt, she presents her plan for the new warehouse to the board. She wrote every page of it, and she knows the numbers cold.
An hour before landing, the window passenger needs to get out. Oriane is up before they've finished asking, standing in the aisle with the laptop held flat against her chest, apologising for being in the way.
What is good girl conditioning?
Good girl conditioning is the habit of being agreeable, undemanding and low-key by default, so that you end up nice, small and easy without ever choosing to be. Many women describe picking it up early, because those three tended to earn warmth and approval. It isn't a medical term, and it isn't a diagnosis.
Each word has a task of its own. Nice keeps the people around you at ease: the smile, the soft phrasing, the sorry for someone else's elbow. Small takes up as little room as possible: arms folded in, credit passed along, an opinion trimmed before anyone hears it. Easy costs nobody anything: no fuss, no requests, and "whichever's easier" whenever there's a choice.
Plenty of women remember the phrase itself, often from moments when they were quiet, helpful or causing no fuss. Where it came from differs from one woman to the next, and this page makes no claim about yours.
If low mood, constant worry or thoughts of harming yourself are part of the picture, please see a doctor or a mental health professional, and don't put it off. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
One thing this article isn't: an argument against gentleness, modesty, faith or duty to family. Many women hold those values freely and with great care, and nothing here asks anyone to set them down, or to distance herself from her family or her community. A woman can be soft-spoken by nature, modest by conviction and devoted to her family, and none of it counts as the conditioning meant here. The conditioning is narrower: the folding-up that happens when nobody wants it, and that you'd never have chosen.
Safety comes first, too. If anyone uses fear, threats, control or harm against you, and being agreeable is how you stay safe around them, that's a way of coping, not conditioning to examine. No idea in this article is worth risking your safety for. For anyone in the UAE, a helpline on 800111 is run by the Dubai Foundation for Women and Children, and its page lists the call as free, at any hour. Elsewhere, a domestic abuse service where you live can help. Wherever you are, if you're in danger, contact your local emergency services.
Where none of that applies, the three words are usually a pattern that has outlasted its reasons.
One step is worth knowing about. If this page is stirring up more than you expected, though, step away first and talk with someone you can count on or your doctor. In a crisis, contact your local emergency services. The step is a quiz, Who Did You Become to Survive?, about the version of you that formed to stay safe. Or read on.
Why do nice, small and easy last so long?
Because they work. Nice keeps a room warm. Small keeps you out of trouble's way. Easy gives nobody a reason to be cross. Together they make a self that's welcome nearly anywhere, and a self that's welcome everywhere is rarely asked to change.
Approval sets them. Each smile, each "she's no trouble", each grateful look from someone whose day you made simpler, confirms all three. After enough years they stop feeling like options at all.
So Oriane's flight says nothing about her confidence. Both selves sit in 34E: the one who'll take the board's questions at nine, and the one who folds up around a stranger's bag. Neither cancels the other.
A habit learned this thoroughly can go on running long after it stopped fitting. What is unlearning looks at that, and at why letting a habit go never means losing what you know.
You are not broken. You are buried. If you've gone without opinions, preferences or room of your own, they're still there to be found.
Where does it show up for women who lead?
Rarely in the big decisions. Plenty of women who lead are decisive where it counts. The three words tend to live in the margins of the working day instead.
Nice shows up as a smile held through a remark that stung. Small shows up as credit for her own idea handed to "the team" by reflex, or a chair at the far corner of the table. Easy shows up as "no problem at all" when it plainly is one, or the worst slot on the agenda accepted before it's offered to anyone else.
None of those moments is a failing, and none of them says anything about her ability. It's three words still doing an old job. Whether a given room still needs that job done is yours to judge.
And if you've tried taking a little more room, only to feel pulled straight back to the corner seat, why is change so hard is about that pull.
Where does kindness end and the conditioning begin?
With choice. Kindness is one of the best things a person brings into a room, and modesty about your own achievements can be a value held with care. Nothing here argues against either.
Range gives it away. Kindness you choose can be soft one day and firm the next, and both are kind. Conditioned niceness has one setting, and it's always agreeable. It says sorry for someone else's elbow. It answers "whichever's easier" when it has a preference.
Small and easy work the same way. Chosen modesty can still put its name on its own plan. Chosen ease can still ask for the aisle seat.
Where do you stand in your own photos?
None of this is therapy or medical care, so if a doctor or therapist is treating you, stay with them, and keep every treatment, medication and kind of support you have. If you're in recovery, your recovery plan and the people who back it stay put. Keep this exercise well away from drinking, drug use, self-harm, and anyone who scares or harms you. Your doctor or a support service is where those belong, and if you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. If turning your attention on yourself like this brings on distress, numbness, flashbacks or a sense that things aren't quite real, leave it out and tell your doctor about it. The same goes if looking at pictures of yourself is hard for you, for any reason.
Quit it partway through if you want to, and leave it out altogether on a day when it's more than you want. If you don't have a group photo you're in, or you'd rather not go looking for one, skip the practice; nothing else on this page depends on it.
You'll need one recent group photo that you're in. Skip any picture that shows someone who has ever scared or harmed you.
- Look first at where you are in the frame: the middle, the end of the row, or half behind someone else.
- Then look at your arms and shoulders, and whether they're tucked in or at ease.
- If you can remember how everyone ended up where they did, ask yourself whether you picked your spot or took whichever was left.
- Close the photo and leave it at that. Any answer to step 3 is just an answer.
If any of it brings up something heavy, stop, and bring it to your doctor, or to a counsellor you trust.
What could the Survive quiz show you?
A name for one self, if the quiz's "Before we start" page is anything to go by. Three signs suggest it could suit you.
- Nice, small or easy rang a bell. If any of the three sounded like your week, it may help to know who in you has been keeping things small.
- One self at a time suits you. That page says: "You're going to look at one specific thing." That thing is, in the page's words, "The version of yourself you became, somewhere along the way, to stay safe."
- Ninety seconds fits your day. "In about 90 seconds, we'll name it," the same page says.
Once you've answered the questions, the result waits behind three boxes: a first name, a phone number and an email address. A question may land on something sore. If it does, stop the quiz there and speak with a person you feel safe with, or your doctor. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
If those three fit, here's the quiz.
There's no deadline on it.
I've yet to meet a kindness that needed to be small.
Rayyan's line about my book, from an Amazon.com review: "If self-improvement has stopped working for you, this explains why."
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. For anything heavy this page has brought up, see a doctor before anything else, and in a crisis, contact your local emergency services. Whenever you choose to take the quiz, it's here: Show me who I became