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Most precontemplators don’t want to change themselves, just the people around them. Precontemplators usually show up in therapy because of pressures from others—a spouse who threatens to leave them, an employer who threatens to fire them, parents who threaten to disown them, or judges who threaten to punish them.
Many contemplators have indefinite plans to take action within the next six months or so. Contemplators, however, may be far from actually making a commitment to action.
People who eternally substitute thinking for action can be called chronic contemplators. When contemplators begin the transition to the preparation stage, their thinking is clearly marked by two changes. First, they begin to focus on the solution rather than the problem. Then they begin to think more about the future than the past. The end of the contemplation stage is a time of anticipation, activity, anxiety, and excitement.
Most people in the preparation stage are planning to take action within the very next month, and are making the final adjustments before they begin to change their behavior. An important step now is to make public your intended change, announcing, for example, “I will stop overeating Monday.” But although those in the preparation stage are committed to action, and may appear to be ready for action, they have not necessarily resolved their ambivalence. They may still need to convince themselves that taking action is what’s best for them.
People who cut short the preparation stage, for example, those who wake up one morning and decide to quit smoking cold turkey, lower their ultimate chances of success.
You can make better use of this time by planning carefully, developing a firm, detailed scheme for action, and making sure that you have learned the change processes you need to carry you through to maintenance and termination.
The action stage is the one in which people most overtly modify their behavior and their surroundings. They stop smoking cigarettes, remove all desserts from the house, pour the last beer down the drain, or confront their fears. In short, they make the move for which they have been preparing.
Action is the most obviously busy period, and the one that requires the greatest commitment of time and energy. Changes made during the action stage are more visible to others than those made during other stages, and therefore receive the greatest recognition. The danger in this is that many people, including professional therapists, often erroneously equate action with change, overlooking not only the critical work that prepares people for successful action but the equally important (and often more challenging) efforts to maintain the changes following action. The sometimes devastating result
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Change never ends with action. Although traditional therapy sees maintenance as a static stage, in fact it is a critically important continuation that can last from as little as six months to as long as a lifetime.
denial allows us to protect ourselves by refusing to acknowledge unpleasant occurrences. From time to time, we all pretend that disagreeable realities, such as pain or danger, simply do not exist.
When we rationalize, we offer plausible explanations for our behavior. Even if that behavior is immature or irrational, we justify it in rational, adult terms. Our rationalizations may appear sound to us, but they are full of holes.
Rationalization’s cousin, intellectualization, refers to the use of abstract analysis to rob events of personal significance. The intellectualizer is able to avoid emotional reactions to and painful awareness of his or her problem. Most of the reasons people give for remaining addicted to nicotine and alcohol are intellectualizations: “I need one vice, so it’s cigarettes,” say some smokers, although, of course, no one “needs” a life-threatening behavior.
Also known as scapegoating, displacement is a form of turning outward, in which we take out our anger, depression, or frustration on a substitute object or person, one that is available and safe to attack. Another form of displacement, known as projection, occurs when we diagnose in someone else those problems that we carry ourselves.
We can also turn feelings inward, believing not that others caused us pain, but that we ourselves created the problem. By turning inward consistently and failing to express negative feelings appropriately, we begin to internalize, or “swallow,” these feelings. The result is habitual self-accusation, self-blame, low self-esteem, and sometimes depression.
Don’t push someone into action Remember, change does not equal action. The most common error is to push someone to take action too soon. A precontemplator is not ready to take action, but may be ready to consider changing. Encourage this inclination.
Ask others to identify your defenses Ask someone you trust to describe, clearly and directly, how you defend yourself and what it is you defend. This is not easy to do, since normally people do not want to confront others’ defenses; in fact, they are supposed to “go along” with your defenses. This is where therapists traditionally are helpful. They tell you what your best friends won’t.
Help others to help you Most people assume that the best way to help is to push you to take action. Taking action before you are ready for it is usually a mistake. When helpers try to rush you into doing something, they are actually diminishing the effectiveness of their help, since you will become resistant to the pressure. Tell your helpers that you are trying to be more open and less defensive, but that you are not ready for action. You need to talk, get feedback, and feel cared for; criticisms or personal attacks will only serve to increase your defensiveness.
The process of social liberation involves creating more alternatives and choices for individuals, providing more information about problem behaviors, and offering public support for people who want to change.
How precontemplators respond to social liberation can determine whether they will progress to the contemplation stage or remain stuck defending their troubled behavior.
How can social liberation work to your advantage? Here’s an obvious example: It’s great to be in a public no-smoking area when you have been thinking about quitting anyway.
Ask who is on your side Look at the social forces that make it easier for you to change. Why are they trying to help you overcome your drinking, eating, smoking, gambling, stress, or other unwanted behavior? What do they gain if you and people like you change? Do they want to rob you of your freedom, or to create a healthier society and a healthier you? Do they want to control you, or just make it easier for you to control yourself?
Ask whose side you are on If you could liberate people from smoking, overeating, and overdrinking, would you use this power? If you could keep people from smoking, overeating, and overdrinking, would you use that power? Would you rather make a donation to the National Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and American Lung Association, or to the American tobacco industry or the national liquor lobby? Even if you don’t want to change your habits, would you rather provide moral support to groups that are trying to help change problem behaviors, or to those who seek to reinforce them?
Seek and welcome outside influences It isn’t necessary to be defensive and resist people who want to change you. Although you may like yourself and your lifestyle, you may have a sneaking suspicion that in fact you would be better off changing.
you don’t know everything. So try to welcome input from people who may see your blind spots or inform you of them. Being encouraged to change by someone who knows more about a problem behavior than you do does not make you a lesser person. If you feel, however, that you are being manipulated, by all means tell the person to back off. But if you can identify with the motives or the message, let it move you. If you keep your defenses down, the liberating forces will be able to reach you—before it is too late.
If you have identified your defenses, solidified a helping relationship by becoming open with yourself and others, especially about problem behavior, and have become receptive to the forces of social liberation, you are probably ready to move to the contemplation stage of change.
Regardless of their tendency to procrastinate, almost all people in the contemplation stage are eager to talk about themselves and their problems, searching for reassurance that their concerns can be understood and overcome.
The unfortunate truth is that we may never know enough about behavioral problems to be certain about their causes or cures.
Techniques without awareness behind them don’t have a chance to make any real impact on our inner selves, and so have little lasting effect.
nondefensively. Seek out films that focus on your problem. Although informational videos can be helpful, they most often offer advice and “how to” information. The riveting emotional messages that dramatic materials provide are preferable. Jack Lemmon’s portrayal of an alcoholic in Save the Tiger cannot fail to move you, nor can Yul Brynner’s final interview, in which he talks about lung cancer and cigarette smoking.
Ask the right questions Albert Einstein said that the key to solving problems is asking the right questions. Emphasize asking the right questions in your search for powerful knowledge.
One of the first steps in becoming more aware is to specify your goals. Ask yourself: Exactly what behavior(s) do I wish to change? How can I measure and track my progress? If you cannot think of a way to measure your progress, the chances are good that your goal is too vague.
Collect the right data From contemplation right through the maintenance stage, monitoring your problem is critical. Most self-changers rely only on informal monitoring, such as estimating their intake of drinks or calories each day. It pays to be precise and constantly hone your awareness about your behavior. Informal monitoring can easily be misleading, especially with overeating, drinking, and smoking, since even well-intentioned people underestimate how much they consume.
Consumption problems—overeating, drinking, smoking, or spending money—are usually best measured by the amount consumed or spent.
Recording your daily food intake and counting calories, for example, is a more sensitive measure of change than a daily weigh-in. Although decreasing your calorie intake from 2,000 calories to 1,500 calories per day is a 25 percent improvement, it is unlikely to lead to a loss of more than I percent of your body weight during your first week or two of action. Despite a highly significant cut in intake, weigh-ins may not initially show you any improvement!
With most problem behaviors, the frequency of the episodes changes before their intensity does. What we choose to monitor, then, can make a major difference in our feeling of progress.
The general rule in behavioral research is that multiple measures are better than single measures. When in doubt, measure more rather than less.
Pay attention to what you tell yourself before engaging in an undesirable habit. Just before you ate that piece of cake, did you tell yourself, “This will make me feel better”? Before starting on a weekend binge, did you declare, “What else are weekends for?” Prior to getting depressed, did you ask yourself, “Am I some kind of idiot?” Are angry outbursts at your husband preceded by thoughts such as, “He’s just like my father”?
One barely delayed consequence of self-indulgence, however, is that often we end up saying, “I shouldn’t have eaten so much,” “I shouldn’t have wasted so much money,” “I shouldn’t have smoked that cigarette,” “I shouldn’t have been so anxious.” In short, “I shouldn’t let one part of me take over the whole of me. That part becomes like a demon I can’t control.”
What should a self-changer do? Unburdened by ideologies, successful self-changers tend to go as deep into unconscious events as they can on their own, and as far back in time as they believe is relevant to their particular problem. Sometimes, these explorations are far-ranging.
Self-reevaluation will reveal to you, once and for all, that your essential values are in fact in conflict with your problem behaviors. Successful self-reevaluation leaves you feeling, thinking, and believing that life would be substantially improved if you didn’t have those behaviors.
Self-reevaluation, then, requires not only that you abandon all hope of finding an effortless route to change, but that you confront some difficult questions: What are you willing to sacrifice for the sake of your self? Giving up drinking may mean you will spend less time with your buddies. Becoming assertive will be a shock to friends who are accustomed to your submissiveness. Less emotional distress may mean that those friends who helped you when you were down will be less focused on you.
Think before you act Especially effective in dealing with consumptive behaviors such as overeating, drinking, or smoking, this technique can also be adapted to other problems. The fact is that over time, almost any habitual behavior can become so unconscious that it is reflexive. You can drink, smoke, eat, spend, or become angry, scared, or depressed without ever reflecting on what you are doing or why you are doing it.
To maximize the empathy you receive from helpers, it is important to let helpers know where you are in the change process. Although you have achieved heightened awareness and have moved past the precontemplation stage, helpers must be aware that you are not ready for action. They should also know that change and action are not synonymous, and that you are changing in your own way and at your own pace. Don’t let overzealous helpers push you into premature action.
Solicit input One of the central tasks of precontemplation was recognizing and overcoming maladaptive defenses; you asked others to point out your self-defeating defenses. During contemplation, you should ask helpers to assist you in your quest for more information, more awareness, and more self-motivation.
THE VALUE OF being prepared—as any Scout can tell you—is that it readies you both to take action and to handle unexpected challenges. It is unquestionably worthwhile to gain the skills and have the resources you need to manage the problems of life effectively. The
proper preparation is vital to successful self-change. In the preparation stage, you will continue to reevaluate both yourself and your problem, but feel increasingly confident of your decision to change. Your personal reevaluation will look more toward your future self, and less to your problematic past. And instead of gathering information about the problem, as you did in contemplation, you will focus on finding the most suitable type of action to overcome it.
The great motivator is a hopeful vision of what your life will be like once you have changed your behavior. Make a list of the benefits of the change, and keep it always in front of you.
Make change a priority Since most of us lead busy lives, intentional self-change cannot happen unless it is given a prominent place on our list of goals.
Setting a time frame is critical for behavior change. Choosing a date to begin can help prevent both premature action and prolonged procrastination, and can help make your action as convenient as possible.
Plan to complete whatever preparations, and—rather than waiting for a magic moment—take responsibility for taking action on the date. Be realistic about the nature of the tasks ahead. Underestimating the challenges of change can lead to cockiness and overconfidence. Wishful thinking about the ease of change will lead to disappointment, which in turn may contribute to ineffective action.
