Changing for Good

by James O Prochaska

  Other instances are more complex. A husband of one of my clients called late one night, saying that his wife was falling apart. She had learned that she was going to be fired from her secretarial position, even though she had been doing her job well. Gossip had spread through the office about her being a former mental patient, and the most powerful secretary in the office did not want to work with her; the boss was succumbing to office politics.

  We met at midnight. The woman wept over the anticipated loss of her job and, more important, of her lifelong dream of having a home of her own (the couple was about to buy a house with a mortgage based in part on her income). Anger threatened to make her irrational. She wanted to tear apart the manipulative secretary, but knew she couldn’t. Together we developed a plan of action. She would go to her legal aid office in the morning and begin to assert her rights under the Handicapped Persons’ Law, which prohibits firing anyone because of physical or mental handicaps. Her action worked: Not only did the boss change his decision, but the increase in self-esteem the woman felt left her in a significantly more powerful position.

  To use the process of social liberation, you must be aware of alternatives such as these, resist the efforts of antichange forces, and see those alternatives as options for growth rather than as coercion. Here are three social liberation techniques that can facilitate intentional change and help you resist commercial advertisements.

  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?

  Next, look at the forces that want you to continue your problem behavior. What is their motive? Do they want to create a healthier society and a healthier you, or do they want to profit by your habits and those of others? What will they lose if people like you change? Do they want to increase your control over problem behaviors, or keep you controlled by these behaviors?

  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.

  Surely if you knew all there was to know about your behavior and its consequences, you wouldn’t need to be open to outside influences. But 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.

  Social liberation self-assessment

  Here is a self-assessment to check your progress in using the process of social liberation. Fill in the number that most closely reflects how frequently you have used the method in the past week to combat your problem.

  1 = Never, 2 = Seldom, 3 = Occasionally, 4 = Often, 5 = Repeatedly

  FREQUENCY:

  _____ I encounter social situations that are designed to help reduce my problem behavior.

  _____ I find that society is changing in ways that make it easier for me to change.

  _____ I notice that people with the same problem I have are asserting their rights.

  _____ I read about people who have successfully changed themselves.

  _____ = Score

  Compare your score (the sum of your four answers) with the benchmark of 14, scored on this process by self-changers who had smoking and weight problems. Self-changers who believe that alcohol abuse, anxiety, and depression are problems should consider scores in the range of 9 to 10 as a sign that they are ready to enter the contemplation stage.

  Lower scores mean also that you may be resisting social influences too much, or that you are not open enough to social cues and options that could ease your journey through the cycle of self-change. Try again to admit these cues and options before proceeding. Try also to incorporate responsible freedom and avoid foolish freedom, as defined in Appendix A, before moving forward into the contemplation stage.

  GEORGE’S INCREASED CONSCIOUSNESS

  Consciousness-raising played an important part in the progress of George, whom we met earlier. Although he left therapy in the precontemplation stage, the things we had talked about there had apparently shaken him up. The man whom I felt I had not helped began years later to refer patients with alcohol problems to me. I was curious enough to call him and find out the rest of his story.

  George allowed himself to begin to change when he turned forty. When he was sober, the very word “forty” sounded like a combination of “fatty” and “baldy” to him. He was afraid that he had already missed the best part of his life. And if this was the best that life had to offer, he felt he might as well drink; at least it dulled the pain of disappointment.

  Even drinking could not prevent him from worrying that he was suffering from the disease he called “terminal failure.” His assurance that his problems were due to the failures of his family, his wife, and his boss was weakening. Perhaps that was partly true, he thought; but it was also partly a defense. He was failing himself, and that was becoming unacceptable.

  One night, some friends invited George to a performance of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. Although he loved theater, George preferred comedies; he wanted to keep things light. But against his “better” judgment, he went along to Iceman, which he knew was about characters in a pub. Perhaps, he thought, it would just be a heavier version of Cheers, his favorite TV show; as it turned out, the play did not cheer him.

  O’Neill’s play is filled with characters trapped by their drinking and defenses, fooled by pipe dreams that someday they would change, someday they would act, someday they would face their futures directly rather than through the bottom of a beer bottle. George found himself crying for the characters—and himself. Then he went out and got drunk.

  Soon thereafter, George discovered he wanted to learn more about the effects of alcohol. “After all,” he joked, “I’m well versed in all my other pastimes. I should be more of an expert on drinking—there’s nothing worse than a dumb drunk.”

  George was shocked to learn that he and his buddies typically drank three to four times more beer than was considered low risk. Even more upsetting was the knowledge that excessive alcohol kills brain cells. It was bad enough that his body was turning to fat; to imagine his brain being planted with fatty cells was downright alarming. George had a brilliant mind, and he prized it above any other part of himself.

  At the same time, George started to become aware of and moved by special helping relationships—those with his children. He recalled the night when he first heard his young daughter plead, “Daddy, don’t go out—we need you here.” Although he still went out drinking, that night he felt guilty for the first time. His jokes didn’t seem so funny, and he knew what it meant to be laughing on the outside and crying on the inside.

  George continued to drink heavily. He got divorced. He was angry, striking out at others verbally and physically. But he was also seri
ously contemplating changing himself. He experienced the formidable truth about consciousness: Once you let your defenses down, and become aware of the facts about your behavior, it is difficult to reverse the process.

  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. However, even if you are not ready to change at this time, read on. You’ll see what’s ahead of you, and how rewarding it can be to contemplate tackling the problems of your life.

  CHAPTER 5

  Contemplation—Change on the Horizon

  LARRY HAD BEEN immobilized in his reclining chair for seven years. It seemed as if it was the only place where he felt safe and secure. Lately though, things were changing. He remained self-conscious, anxious, and angry around people, but he was gaining insight into his passive-aggressive approach, and that excited him. He saw, for the first time, how his parents had undermined his trust of other people by sending him negative messages about them. He finally realized it was actually his parents who were negative! It was scary how much he had internalized their harsh words, and how that kept him trapped. When Larry began to talk about himself and his problems, his teenage children were shocked. But he knew he was getting ready to get out of his chair and back into life.

  Larry is in the contemplation stage of change. He is aware of his problems with passivity and depression, is struggling to understand their causes and cures, and is seriously thinking about solving them. Excited about his new awareness, Larry is letting down his defenses and welcoming others into his life, and he is confident that he will act soon. He is in the strongest position possible in this stage, and will soon move on into preparation.

  Others typically get stuck in the contemplation stage, sometimes for years. They fall into a major trap: chronic contemplation. Chronic contemplators substitute thinking for acting, promising that they are going to act “someday.” Their motto is “When in doubt, don’t change.”

  In Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, the two main characters defer all decisions until Godot arrives. Godot never comes. This is a perfect description of chronic contemplators—they seem always to be waiting for Godot. Conflicts and problems hang suspended; decisions are never finalized; action is avoided. Some believe that Godot represents God, and many chronic contemplators do seem to be waiting for divine intervention. On the other hand, godot is the French word for boot, and a swift kick from one is just what some chronic contemplators need to get them moving.

  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. Unlike those in the precontemplation stage, contemplators are open to reading articles and books about psychology in general, and their problems in particular. But while they can actively read, think, and talk, they are not ready to prepare for action until they achieve a greater understanding of their behavior. As a result, consciousness-raising is just as important in the contemplation stage as it was during the earlier stage.

  Contemplators want to change, but this desire exists simultaneously with an unwitting resistance to it. This ambivalence is understandable, since action brings with it a terrifying, even paralyzing fear of failure. Add to this the anxiety that contemplators feel about sacrificing the life with which they are familiar, and the fear of meeting the “new self” created by change, and you can easily see why so many contemplators become stuck. They prefer a familiar self to one that is better, thus postponing anxiety and avoiding failure.

  Don’t scoff at the anxiety attached to change. The prominent existential psychologist James Bugental called the fear of changing “a fate worse than death.” Change threatens our very identity and asks us to relinquish our way of being. However healthy change may be, it threatens our security, and sometimes even self-defeating security feels better than none. An awareness of this ambivalence can prevent you from falling into one of the many traps that are the negative responses to contemplation. Here are some of them.

  The search for absolute certainty Alfred didn’t think that he understood his problems well enough to know how—or even what—to change. An engineer, Alfred mistrusted psychology. It didn’t seem a “real” science that could provide any solid information about his behavior. He explored it anyway, taking an engineer’s exhaustive approach. He spent five years analyzing the factors that had made him so passive and shy. The farther he went back into his history, the more he found to analyze, and he concluded that his analysis would never come to an end. Alfred was getting lost in the mazes of his memory and his mind.

  Certain people’s personalities virtually guarantee that they will become bogged down in prolonged contemplation. Obsessive people like Alfred believe that they must explore every aspect of an issue until they achieve an absolute certainty as to its origin. Perhaps, they hope, the problem will go away while they are thinking about it, or perhaps they will find enough pieces of the puzzle to complete the picture and make change happen easily.

  By substituting worrying for working, fearful obsessives can search for years, shifting from one therapist or book to another, always waiting until they are completely certain that their approach to change will be perfect. Not coincidentally, there are psychotherapists who decline to suggest action without an obsessive understanding of their clients’ problems. Such practitioners unwittingly encourage chronic contemplation and place obstacles to their clients’ growth.

  The unfortunate truth is that we may never know enough about behavioral problems to be certain about their causes or cures. As we shall see in the next chapter, although there is always room to doubt our understanding, our intentions, and our actions, there comes a time when decisions must be made.

  Waiting for the magic moment Deborah talked about her marital troubles until her friends were sick of hearing about them. Deborah had been miserable for as long as they could remember. They all knew about her husband’s drinking problems and his neurotic behavior, and they all advised Deborah to leave him. Deborah agreed, but always she found excuses for delaying action. Someday soon, she would get a divorce—but for now, all she did was talk.

  Many people have an almost mystical belief that someday, somehow, there will be a magic moment that will be absolutely perfect for change. Like Deborah, chronic contemplators tell themselves that they will change “when the time is right.” But when will the time be right? “When I’m good and ready,” they declare. But when will they be ready? “When things slow down.” Things, of course, never slow down.

  Wishful thinking This is probably the most common behavior that prevents people from progressing from contemplation to preparation and action. Wishful thinkers want to have their cake and eat it too, to go on living as they always have, but with different consequences. Here are a few examples of wishful thinking we have encountered; see how many of these wishes you make from time to time:

  I wish I could eat whatever I want and not gain weight.

  I wish I could drink as much as I like and not lose control.

  I wish I could work a seventy-hour week and spend lots of time with my children.

  I wish they would discover a cure for lung cancer.

  It’s easier to wish for change than to work toward it, just as it’s easier to win the lottery than to work for a living. The passive approach, however, is rarely successful. Reflect on your own life experiences: How often have important, desirable changes occurred as a result of your wishing for them?

  Prayer can be a kind of wishing or hoping, and the wisest of those who pray for divine intervention always remember that “God helps those who help themselves.” This injunction underlines the subtle difference between wishing and hoping. Bernie Siegel, author of Love, Medicine, and Miracles, writes that wishful thinking is passive and ex
ternal—“wishing on a star” for a miracle or magic. Hope, by contrast, is active and realistic. Hoping demands that you envision your success, and then work toward it. Those who hope put their personalities behind their desires, and thus have a more realistic opportunity to achieve them.

  Premature action One of our workshop participants, a newly married middle-aged woman, implored her husband, Fred, to kick his fifteen-year-old cigar habit, and took every opportunity to remind him of the health dangers. Fred was just developing a contemplative interest in modifying his behavior, and he ignored this “constant bantering” until his wife’s suggestions escalated into demands. Fred then reluctantly registered for a smoking cessation program, from which he dropped out after two meetings, telling her, “See, I told you I couldn’t do it! I hope you’re happy now!” He had taken premature action, knowing that by failing this time he could forestall, if not prevent, a next time. She had set her husband up for failure by pushing him too quickly into action.

  We frequently see this self-defeating response in contemplators who are faced with threats from family or friends to “change or else.” As an aggressive response to this implied or actual threat, the contemplator makes a halfhearted attempt to change. Naturally it fails—by unconscious design, so the contemplator can justify his or her continued resistance to change while simultaneously heaping guilt onto those who demanded the change.

  Premature action frequently occurs on New Year’s Day, Labor Day, birthdays, and other times when people feel pressured to take action. We are “supposed to change” on these dates, and may well jump into action, ready or not. The payoff for premature action is that it can relieve some guilt and social pressure. After the invariable failure, the implicit message is, “Now stay off my back about this change nonsense.”