Episode 3 - Reframing the Stages of Change

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Kevin: Welcome everyone to another episode of the Reframeable Podcast, a podcast that brings you people's stories and ideas about how we can work to reframe our relationship, not just with alcohol, but with stress, anxiety, relationships, enjoyment, and so much more. Because changing our relationship with alcohol is about so much more than changing the contents of our glass.

This podcast is brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you. My name is Kevin Bellack. I'm a certified professional recovery coach and the head of coaching at the Reframe app.

In today's episode, I want to talk about making changes in our life.

I remember early on in my own journey, my therapist showed me the stages of change model [00:01:00] that someone much smarter than myself came up with. However, I never liked the way it was set up. The model is laid out in a circle where we move from one step to the next, and it starts out with the first stage of change being pre-contemplation.  Where we are not looking to make a change at all.

From there, we move on to the next three stages, which are contemplation, preparation, and action. We begin to contemplate making a change so we see the need to do something different. Then we make preparations to do so and take action. This is where we actively change our behavior and work on whatever it is that we're focused on at that time. Obviously, there are no set timeframes that any of these steps take, and they can last as long as they need to. And the bigger the change, theoretically, the longer we may be in each stage.

As a personal example, I would say that once I decided that change was needed related to how alcohol was showing up in my life, [00:02:00] and I moved into that contemplation stage, I spent a good six months there.  There was some overlap, I believe, between contemplation and preparation, so it's not an easy determination as to the length, nor is it a big deal to nail that down.

But then we take action and that's where we actively modify our old behavior and work on the change we set out to make. From there, we get into the maintenance phase where the new behavior replaces the old, in an ideal scenario, of course. Ultimately the circle ends with relapse or falling back into old patterns, and then circles back to pre-contemplation and round and round it goes. I never liked the circular nature of it. Or that the last part where everything ends with relapse and starts over at pre-contemplation, I understand the overall concept is to learn from each relapse and extend the period of time we stay in the action and maintenance phases and shorten the relapse, pre-contemplation, contemplation phases.[00:03:00]

the action of maintenance is where we want to live eventually, right? But the inevitability of that relapse as well as the fact that we have to go back through the cycle again, almost makes it feel like we're starting over when we really should be recycling from any kind of relapse or slip phase back into action, not into the beginning phases.

Of course I'm in no way saying the model is wrong. I just wanted to reframe this a little bit. And give you a different way to look at it.

For me, awareness is the first step to making any change. I'm skipping straight to the point that we become aware that a change is necessary.  We become aware that there's a problem with something, whether that's alcohol's role in your life or some other change you want to make. And if you're here and you're listening to this, I'm guessing you're at least becoming aware, or perhaps you're much further along on your journey.

So becoming aware is the first step to making any change. What's the next step? [00:04:00] Wanting to make a change and being willing to make a change. I combine wanting and willing together, but it's important to note the distinction between the two. We might want to make a change, but are we truly willing to do what we need for it? I know a lot of people, myself, very much included in this demographic who, when they start off on this road and are aware that alcohol is showing up in their life in a negative way, they want to make a change.

But when you go about the action to actually make the change, you may not be willing to fully commit to what you need to do. You want to change, you want the benefits, or you want to feel better, or you want to not drink as much or at all anymore, but you may struggle with things along the way. You have to want it, but wanting it isn't enough.

We have to also be willing to do what is needed in order to make this change in our lives. I may want to be alcohol free, or I [00:05:00] may want to drink mindfully, but am I willing to become the person who is alcohol free? Am I willing to become someone who is a mindful drinker? For me, as an example, I wanted to reduce my alcohol consumption and become healthier.

However, I was not willing to perhaps tell people, tell certain people that I, I wasn't drinking in the. When I worked on moderation, I wanted to do it, but I was only willing to push back against prompts for more alcohol so much before I caved. Wanting can be enough in the beginning to start us off.

The willingness to do certain things can come later, but it definitely has to come at some point if we want to do something that lasts.

So I'm gonna pause here. And give you your first journal prompt for today. Uh, so I want you to think about a change you're making or looking to make in your life. And just so you know, I will include, these prompts in the show notes so you don't have to stop what you're doing [00:06:00] and write this down right now.

But think about a change you're making or looking to make in your life. Ask yourself, am I willing to make this change? Am I just wanting to make it? Am I both or am I neither? Think about that. Assess where you're at, and if you aren't quite willing yet to implement a particular change, why not? What's currently holding you back?

So moving on. Whether you're willing to make a change, wanting, or both, the next step is to put in the work. This is where all the awkward, uncomfortable, stressful progress happens. When we get into doing things differently, and I'm just calling this the work phase, I don't differentiate between action and maintenance because I feel we cycle back through action and maintenance repeatedly.

In this phase, I think one of the most important things we can do is to get rid of any arbitrary deadlines we may have set for ourselves [00:07:00] as well. I see this all the time, and I do this all the time too before I catch myself on it. We set timeframes that we are going to make this change and it's going to take 30 days to be successful.

It's going to be 60 days, 21, 75, so on. However, we have to realize that we will change in direct proportion to the amount of work we put into making that change and the amount of willingness we have to make that change. That being said, we can be very willing. We can put in a lot of work and our goals can still allude us.

It can still be very difficult. I like to tell myself that it takes as long as it takes and people don't like that answer or that thought process because we like to set timeframes and we're a very goal-oriented society because that's how work gets done. That's how school teaches us to do things. Well, guess what?

That's not necessarily how life works, and we have built up different habits, routines, and issues over time, that [00:08:00] we are not going to be able to change overnight. So to put an arbitrary timeframe on this puts pressure on us to make a change when we may not know how. Because like I said in this, in the very first podcast, there is only one way to address alcohol's role in your life, and that's the way that works for you, and that's going to be different than the person next to you.

So you could both follow the same plan. You can both read the same books, you could both do the same meetings, but you both have very different and unique external and internal factors that need to be addressed as well. We're not making widgets here. We're trying to make a change in our life and show up differently maybe for the first time in decades.

So there's nothing wrong with giving ourselves time to learn. So we need to become aware that change doesn't happen on some preset timeline. Change happens when we continue to work on it and continue to come back and keep going regardless of the setbacks.

So awareness, [00:09:00] willingness, and work... the preparation, figuring out what tools work for us, what program works for us, what happens when we have a slip, relapse, drink more than we want to. We can restart our day counts. We can keep them going. We can track our drinks as we cut back and reassess how our plan is working along the way.

That's all part of the work. All of this is to say that this journey we're on is not a linear or circular path. There are ups and downs, there's back and forth, there's pauses, there's rest. But one thing there usually never is, is a finish line. With any meaningful change in our life, we don't arrive and get to sit back and enjoy our progress for long. We can't. Because if we stop doing the work that got us, Then that's when we start to slide back to potentially undesirable behaviors, but we do get better at the things that we work on. [00:10:00] Part of the work phase is reflecting on what has helped us make changes and reflection isn't something you do once you're successful.

It's something we need to set aside time for regularly, all along this path. If we get to day two without alcohol, or if we cut back from six drinks a day to four, we have to reflect on how we did that, what worked well, what didn't. How can I do this again tomorrow. If I'm starting on another day one, or if I had eight drinks instead of four or six last night, we'd have to ask ourselves, what could I have done differently yesterday? How can I try that today? How can I make that change?

So whether we're addressing alcohol or any other aspect of our life, there's always tomorrow and a new challenge and a new struggle.

And that's why we say addressing alcohol in our life is so much more than just addressing the contents of our glass. So it's important to change from a task-based, goal-based mindset to [00:11:00] one of making lasting changes in our daily life, changing our habits, changing our routines, reframing the way we look at and approach these areas in our life.

It's about making a change today and continuing to work on that change tomorrow, reassessing along the way. I look at it more as a constant evolution, and evolution takes time. It can be messy. We will test out things that just don't work for us. We might fail and slip and get discouraged, and that's when we have to make sure we remember why we wanted to make this change in the first place. Write it down, talk about it to someone, revisit it often, and remember to ask for help along the way.

When I started on my journey, I said I didn't have an off switch, so I wanted, I was hoping that my therapist would install a dimmer switch in my head so I could just drink less.

I didn't want to use alcohol as the crutch I was using it for, but I wasn't willing to give it up completely just yet. But I kept working on it. I [00:12:00] kept learning about it. I kept reading books and listening to people's stories. I tried to moderate. I tried to cut it out for a time and back again. Over time, I realized that I didn't like the way it showed up in my life, but I fought it and I tried to stay on my moderation journey and kept running against roadblocks.

Those roadblocks were frustrating, discouraging, but ultimately I ran into enough of them and that detour, they took me on and the work that I kept doing ended up directing me to what worked best in my life, which was working on being alcohol free. That's what worked for. That was my journey. That's not gonna be everybody's journey here.

I stayed in the work phase, whether I drank more than I wanted to, or I drank when I didn't want to. I kept searching for how I wanted to show up for myself. I added accountability into my life to help me along the way. And while I got discouraged by setbacks, I tried not to see them as going back to square one.

I saw it as an opportunity to learn [00:13:00] from how I didn't want to show up anymore and to keep working on it and being willing to make a change, not just wanting and hoping to make a change. So challenge the models that you see if they don't resonate with you. I say challenge them, don't dismiss them. Like I said, someone much smarter and more qualified than me came up with the stages of change model.

I mentioned in the beginning. I didn't dismiss it, I challenged it. I challenged what I didn't agree with, and I tried to make sense of it for me. Find what works for you, but recognize that you can reframe them and make them your own as well.

So I wanna wrap up this episode by asking what do you need to work on right now? As many people know, I'm a big journaler and I like to dump my thoughts into my journal app on a regular basis. So with that being said, here is your second set of journal prompts for today and of As, as the ones before. I will add these into the show notes so you can access them later.[00:14:00]

So, What stage are you in on your journey using whatever model works for you? If you're here, I would say that you're at least aware about the need to potentially make a change in your life. Are you ready to start? What work do you need to focus on today in order to start or continue that process?

Wherever you're at? What work do you need to plan for tomorrow, and what are you willing to do to make a change?

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Reframeable Podcast, brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol, using neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe and share with those that you feel may benefit from it. I want to thank you again for listening, and be sure to come back next week for [00:15:00] another episode. Have a great day.