Changing and Preventing Counterproductive Thinking and Behaviors
A Plan for Change and Prevention: Changing and preventing counterproductive thinking and behavior is hard work. We all need a plan for change and prevention in our lives when we are faced with troubles. The first step is to identify different patterns in our lives that are risky and dangerous. You can read more about this in part 1 of this article.
This portion of the plan breaks down new ways of thinking and behaviors. Furthermore, it helps you begin to look at ways to cope with stressors and life’s problems in healthy ways. Toward the end of the article, it discusses how to safety plan and offers ideas for support from those in our lives. There is nothing complex about this plan, so don’t overthink it. If you create one that is specific to you it will at minimal raise your awareness to what needs changed in your lives. Lastly, if you follow it consistently and think deeply self-critically about it you will make changes.
1 Finding new ways to think and behave
The first part of this plan helps to identify dangerous/risky patterns such as Attitudes, Values, Beliefs, Triggers, Thinking, Behaviors Emotions, Seemingly Unimportant Decisions, and High-Risk Situations. Once you have identified them it’s time to figure out how to prevent and change them. This isn’t as complicated as you might think but it’s a war between your ears you must win. Furthermore, you need to take small steps and have small wins so you can begin to build momentum.
The fight begins when you become aware in your mind one of the above patterns is present. Whether it be a belief, trigger, emotion, or high-risk situation and so on. The idea is to replace it with a rational or more productive thought and ultimately behavior. You’re replacing the old thought with a completely new thought that challenges the counterproductive, risky, or dangerous thought and behaviors. New thinking can help you exit the cycle of old thinking and behavior patterns. Like I said above it’s not that complicated. We just need to make new patterns of thinking and behaviors in our lives that are productive.
Let’s look at an example.
Say when you get home from work you feel the need to eat and every time you eat it turns into non-stop overindulging. You have identified the high risk of getting home, walking to your kitchen, and finding food. A corrective for this may be getting home and tell yourself to go to a different room and start engaging in something else. There is a good deal of trial and error with change if one corrective doesn’t work try something else the next time. Again, it’s all about the small steps and the small wins. Don’t be hard on yourself.
We also need to get to a point in our lives where we believe that change takes momentum. This is really important to understand, if we want to see big results we must realize that each little step is a win.
Part 1 discussed identifying the most dangerous/risky thought we have. These are the thought you want to spend the most time finding correctives for. If we can change our most dangerous thinking, we can really begin to win the war between our ears. Also remember what we are talking about is patterns which means they pop up all the time over and over again. Overtime with some practice they will become much easier to identify and correct.
Identify Coping Strategies
Having ways to cope with stress and other problems in our lives is vital to our sanity. Furthermore, when our patterns of thinking builds-up we need an outlet to transition back to a healthy state or normal. There are two different types of coping responses. The first I want to discuss is Maladaptive Coping Response. This is where we use an unhealthy means to deal with or escape a problem. The second is Adaptive Coping Responses. These are healthy ways we respond to life stressors.
We all have maladaptive coping responses the trick is to identify them and do what we can to change them. Some examples but not limited to may be overeating, smoking, using alcohol or drugs, binge watching tv, excessive phone time, excessive shopping, or spending and many more. These maladaptive responses along with many others become ingrained in us so deeply sometimes they become normal habits. The reality is they can be detrimental to our wellbeing and impact those around us.
There are much healthier ways to deal with life stressors and other problems. Adaptive coping responses help us do just that. Some examples of Adaptive Coping Responses may include but are not limited to, exercise, eating healthy, reading, writing, meditation, recreational activities, learning something new and spending quality time with people you care about. Adaptive Coping Responses are in place to help break up the day to day build up in our lives. They allow us to step away from whatever is going on and engage in something healthy we enjoy.
Adaptive Coping Responses also follow into the concept of Self-Care. We all need outlets, ways, and time to heal from the busyness of our lives. Self-Care shouldn’t just happen on vacation it should be planned time daily or at least weekly where we can get away and focus on you. It’s all about you and doing what you want. Self-Care is difficult sometimes because it’s tough to shut everything off. This change like all other change can be done with practice trial and error and building momentum.
Self-Care can take the form of many different things. It’s extremely unique to each individual person. We all need hobbies and things we absolutely enjoy doing. Self-Care is about finding those things that bring us enjoyment. It may also just be time to relax or doing something that is exhilarating. At the end of the day, we all need to choose our Self-Care and practice it frequently.
Creating a Safety Plan
If we are trying to change our thinking and behavior, we need to understand to make mistakes is only human. No matter how hard we dedicate our time to change we may still have shortcomings. Another strategy we can use is having a safety plan in case we feel like things are going to take a turn for the worst. A safety plan is good to write down and keep close by. It’s a list of backups when things are going astray. Moreover, it’s a list of exits you can take to keep you away from the old patterns.
A safety plan can help remind you of what you’re working for. In part it’s a much stronger and more purposeful urge control. This list should contain alternative you can take toward the specific behavior you’re trying to change. When you want to engage in an old behavior pull your plan out and review it. If you continue the old behavior your safety plan needs to be revised until it works for you.
Identify your support network
The community of those around us can work for or against us. We all need to decide who we want in our circle. Some people are good for us and other are not. There is power in our community, and it can be the method to helping us change if we allow it. For the people in our lives, we know are detrimental to our change we need to cut ties or set boundaries with. As harsh as it may sound, there may be some people we need to delete or block on our phones.
A support network can be anyone you trust to help. Some characteristics of a support person (obviously not limited to) is someone who will hold you accountable for your actions without enabling you, their nonjudgmental and always have your best interests in mind. Support network can be family, friends, doctors, counselors, co-workers and so on. The idea is to have a list of people and their contact information you can reach out to when you are struggling to no avail. Above all, when everything you’re doing isn’t working and you’re at immediate risk to go back into counterproductive patterns of behavior.
Conclusion
This article covers the second half of the Change and Preventing Plan. After you have identified patterns of dangerous patterns in your mind it’s time to challenge it. We all need to make changes in our lives to move forward and become the best version of ourselves. I hope I have helped in some way gain new insight. The change process can be tough work but with momentum and small wins it can really pay off.
If you like what you have read, check out other articles on the website ThinkingDeeplySelf-Critically.com the site is designed to give us tools and techniques to help us become the best version of ourselves. There are four main categories on the site. The Foundation, Our Responsibility to Us, Our Responsibility to Others and Facilitating Crisis. We can also be found on Pinterest.
For the first half of this article check out A Plan for Change and Prevention (Part 1)
