Introducing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (Introducing...) (12 page)

Once Mario has continued this diary for about a week he can identify several patterns in his habit. He notices that he frequently sucks his thumb when he is bored or daydreaming and when he experiences unpleasant feelings like being irritated or anxious. He also notices that he doesn’t suck his thumb when he’s busy, occupied with something interesting or when he’s in a particularly good mood. This monitoring helps Mario develop a plan for stopping his habit.

Get another perspective

It can be helpful to include the views of people around you when you are trying to understand more about your habit. If you feel comfortable doing so, ask others what they have noticed about your habit and their thoughts about what triggers it. They may have noticed things you haven’t! Their ideas can also be very helpful when you start actively trying to break your habit.

Step 3: changing your habit

Okay, you are now ready to actually make your change. The following techniques will help you to do this. Be systematic in how you go about tackling your habit. Be persistent. You’ll probably find making a written plan of how you are going to go about it will also be very helpful.

A – A single step at a time

How many of us have set out on a ‘health kick’ or ‘organization drive’ where we try to completely change all of our behaviours at once? And is this approach ever successful? Very rarely. The reason that so many New Year’s resolutions go awry is probably that people try to change too much. Just
concentrate on changing one thing at a time
. It takes effort and time to change even a small habit – try changing too many things at once and the chances are you won’t succeed with any of them.

A single step at a time can also sometimes mean breaking a habit down into smaller parts and changing each of them, one by one. Consider changing things slowly – many people, for example, find it easier to cut down on smoking or eating certain foods before getting rid of the habit altogether. However you decide to do it – think it through and write a clear plan for yourself of when you will do what. It may be helpful to start small. For example, if you want to drink more water, start with one glass a day, at the same time each day. Keep this up for several days then add in one more, and so on. Don’t try drinking eight glasses a day from the start.

B – Be realistic

We probably could all do with being healthier, more patient, more organized and implementing many other such improvements. Everyone has habits that may not be ideal. Just as it’s important to aim for changing just one thing at a time, so it’s important to
aim for change that is realistic and achievable
. Don’t try to completely reinvent yourself – the chances are you are mostly fine as you are – you just need to tweak the things you are not happy with. If you aim for ‘good enough’ in your habits you have every chance of succeeding. Aim for ‘perfect’, and you are setting yourself up for failure. It may be realistic to give up cigarettes. It may not be realistic to also never eat another chocolate bar, drink 3 litres of water every day, go to the gym five times a week and never shout at anyone.

C – Clarity: be clear about what you are changing

Use what you’ve learnt from your monitoring to
make sure you are very clear with yourself
about what aspects of your behaviour you are changing and what your goals are. For some habits this will be obvious – you want to stop smoking or biting your nails or throwing your clothes on the floor. For others it may be less so – some interpersonal habits, for example, such as nagging, arguing or criticizing might take more clarifying. Be very specific about exactly what you want to be different and what you want to be doing or saying instead.

D – Date: set a date

One of the ways you can motivate yourself and get your energy levels up to tackle this habit change is to
build in some anticipation
. Set a date for when you will make your change and start anticipating it. Let other people know what you are planning – it can make it harder to back down then. Generate some excitement in yourself about this date. This is the day that you are going to start a process that will make you feel so much better in the long run, even if it’s hard work to begin with.

E – Elephants never forget …

But you are not an elephant! Find ways to remind yourself why you are doing this. Remember your pros and cons list? Write down all those reasons why you are trying to change your habit and keep the list somewhere you can look at it regularly. Stick it up on the back of a door, the bathroom mirror, the fridge or your computer monitor – somewhere you will be reminded of it several times a day.
Write down your goal and keep that around as a reminder
.

F – Falling or Failing: watch out for ‘danger times’

From your diary you will be able to work out your habit ‘danger times’. For Mario, these were times when he was likely to be bored or have time to day-dream.
Be on your guard at these times
. Avoid them if you can and if you can’t, switch off your ‘auto-pilot’– try to stay alert in order to catch yourself before your habit kicks in. Try to identify the urge to engage in the habit before you start. When you feel the urge, move on to something else.

Mario found keeping his hands occupied at times when he was day-dreaming or drifting off was helpful. He held a stress ball while listening at school or sitting on the bus, and found that squeezing this worked as an alternative to thumb-sucking. Sometimes we can’t predict when the trigger situations might happen. If your habit tends to occur when you are upset, you can’t always see this coming. However, you can train yourself to be more aware that when you are upset you might engage in your habit and to be on guard against slipping into it at those times.

G – Goodies!

Include in your plan small ways in which you will
reward yourself
after you achieve each milestone. This might be with something nice to eat, (not chocolate, if your goal is losing weight!) a small gift to yourself (unless your goal is spending less!), time spent watching a film or reading a book, a hot bath – anything that will feel like a treat and that you’ll look forward to. It doesn’t have to be anything spectacular but it should be an indulgence – not something you do every day, or would be doing anyway. Be proud of yourself, but watch out for self-criticism. Don’t tell yourself your milestone is not an achievement because you should be doing the right thing anyway.

Breaking habits is hard, so celebrate successes as you go along.

H – Held back: watch out for negative thoughts

Remember the thoughts we identified which might be holding you back? Watch out for your mind ambushing you with these as you go along. These can be as automatic as the habit itself. Telling yourself, ‘I’ll never do this. It’s too hard. I’ve always failed before.’ won’t help you to reach your goal. Raise your awareness of these thoughts. When you notice them starting to creep into your mind, let them go. Try instead to visualize yourself changing your habit. What will you look like when you have done it? Visualize the attractive, well-shaped nails you might have, or the way in which your partner will smile when noticing your perfume or aftershave, instead of the smell of smoke. Anna-Maria found it helpful to tell herself ‘I am not a smoker’ – she wrote it on the front of her work diary and found herself looking at it and repeating it whenever her habit threatened to drag her back in.

I – Invite support

Ask people around you (those whom you trust to be supportive) to help boost your efforts. Agree in advance with them what they will (and will not) do. Perhaps they can point something out to you when you don’t notice you are doing it. Maybe they can help with rewards after an achievement. Watch out for problems here, though. There is no point in asking anyone to point out when you are picking at your skin if you are going to shout at them for doing so.

J – Juggle things around

Replace bad habits with better ones. Find something else to do with your hands instead of picking, scratching or pulling. Eat or drink something different. It can be much easier to replace a particular behaviour with another rather than simply doing nothing.

Case study – Justin

Justin drinks too much. He is not addicted to alcohol but sometimes feels he may not be far off. He drinks almost every evening and has at times not been particularly alert at work first thing in the morning because of a ‘heavy night’ the night before. He works on a building site and occasionally his boss has raised concerns about safety when he appears hungover. His girlfriend has told him she worries he drinks too much, and his GP points out that he’s drinking above the recommended limit for a man of his age.

Justin is also slightly overweight and, in trying to lose weight, he identifies that most of his excess calories come from drinking alcohol. Justin decides he wants to cut down on his drinking and works through the pros and cons exercise with his girlfriend to help him make a change. He recognizes that he is afraid of losing some of his social life and certain friends if he gives up drinking. He believes some friends would laugh or make fun of him for giving up. He examines his thoughts about this, and then tests them out by talking to some of his friends.

Most are actually far more supportive than he’d expected. Only one is disparaging and Justin realizes he cares less about this friend because of it. One friend even offers to actively help Justin by doing other things socially rather than going to the pub. Justin keeps a diary of his drinking. He identifies that he drinks more when he is under stress or when he is with particular people. He decides it will be helpful to find other ways of relieving stress, and also arranges to see those people only with their partners present, since this helps him limit what he’ll drink.

Justin sets a date to cut down on his drinking and informs close friends about his plan. He also decides on his target intake of units per week. He and his girlfriend identify outings and small rewards for each time he reaches a pre-agreed milestone. He avoids his ‘danger times’ and goes out running more often, as he has previously identified that this helps him to feel less stressed.

After a few weeks, Justin has reduced his drinking to a much more sensible, manageable level. He still enjoys going out with the boys from work, but does so less, and discovers when he’s out with them he doesn’t want to drink the quantities he used to. He has established a new habit.

Dealing with lapses or slip-ups

Whether we are breaking old habits or building new ones, we rarely get it right straight away. Lapses are inevitable and it is important that you recognize this from the beginning. When you have a lapse it can be tempting to be furious with yourself or to feel totally despairing and think you are just not up to the task. Both reactions can lead to you wanting to just give it all up. Try not to do this. You are only back to square one if you choose to be. Having a lapse doesn’t negate the learning and achievement that went before – all of that still happened. Remember what you have achieved so far, even if it seems very little, and start again. Think about what caused the lapse. Identify your thoughts and feelings about it and learn from them. How can you incorporate this knowledge into your plan to make it less likely that you will slip-up again? Lapses are only a problem if you don’t learn from them.