13 Bite-Sized Recovery
Overview
- Personal experience has taught me a lot about the challenges of making changes
- Meaningful change will take time and will include many setbacks along the way
- Setting realistic goals – and tweaking them as needed – is crucial to success
- Not everything about change is positive, which we need to be sensitive to when it comes to our clients
In my career, I have written many, many treatment plans. Some of these were admittedly generic templates of plans I had written for other clients with similar profiles – a fact that I acknowledge is not the right way to be a good counselor but is sometimes the expedient way. Other plans were carefully tailored to the individual client’s needs, based on information from the assessment, creatively drawn up to play into the person’s strengths and interests. With both types of plans, there were successes as well as misses. The plan itself, it turns out, cannot account for action.
And then when I looked at my own experience of change, I had some startling realizations that I want to explore here. Before I share this personal anecdote, I want to make clear that I am not using myself as the model of what it takes to change, nor am I feigning understanding of what each client experiences as their own struggles of change. I simply want to provide some insight into why change can be so frustrating and difficult to initiate, let alone maintain.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that I was someone who despised working out, or even the very idea of working out, at least until I was 44 years old. Prior to that, the most effort I’d ever made was to go to a gym a couple of times, use a few machines with no real plan or purpose, and maybe spend a few minutes on a treadmill. Occasionally I would go for a run, but I never committed to it with any consistency or real long-term plan.
So it came as something of a shock to me, as well as everyone who knew me, when shortly after my 44th birthday, I started working out in my basement on a near daily basis. Exercises I found dreadful became movements I craved. Workout terminology that I previously mocked made its way into my everyday lingo. Over time, the habit grew into an entire lifestyle change for me, and something I can call a hobby. Frankly, I don’t fully understand how it happened – how it began, took hold, and became routine.
Nevertheless, the things I’ve learned from developing my own workout plan and lifestyle changes have real applications to the field of addiction and mental health recovery. Four primary takeaways for me are:
- Change is not linear
- Goals need to be calibrated appropriately
- Expectations about the change process are every bit as important as the actual goal
- Change can be lonely
Change Is Not Linear
Some days I feel incredibly strong and healthy, while other days I feel tired, moody, and lackluster. If I focus only on the short-term, I can easily miss the progress I’ve made. No change process looks like a clean and neat line; rather, it is shaped more like a gradually rising wave. Low points on the waves might make change seem impossible (why am I only this far along after so much time and hard work?). But stepping back, they are a normal part of the longer-term process of reaching our goals.
I heard the phrase Progress, not perfection many times over the years, but when I internalized its meaning, it became a powerful mantra. I am healthier than I was a year ago, and that’s the success. Clients may become discouraged when they experience setbacks. We need to prepare for these unexpected but predictable events and arm clients with productive ways to respond to the low points on their own wavy path. In doing so, we remind them of the bigger goals they are working towards, and those they have already attained.
CALIBRATE GOALS APPROPRIATELY
Speaking of goals, another realization of mine is that we frequently misjudge our ability to be consistent and maintain a behavior long-term, as well as the magnitude of change we can realistically attain in a given time period.
Just like the old saying about eating an elephant one bite at a time, so the work of change requires small and gradual steps. Goal-setting is an area we struggle mightily with, both in our individual and professional lives. Lives. Things seem much simpler in our minds or on paper, before we have to make the action reality. Lose 10 lb? Cut down on my drinking? Start taking a walk everyday? These all sound like simple things that others do all the time. Why shouldn’t I be able to do it as well?
The answer has two parts. One, you and I can make those changes; it’s very possible. But two, building new habits is remarkably challenging.
Note that goals and steps toward those goals are separated by a critical distinction. One category includes inputs and the other includes outputs. Inputs are the things we can control, the actions we take toward a goal. Outputs, on the other hand, are not directly in our control. They are the hoped-for result of our actions.
If my goal is to lose 20 pounds, that is the output. I don’t have full control over reaching that goal, and it isn’t something I can make happen quickly. The input involves the behaviors I must do to try and reach that goal. I can journal my food intake, talk to a nutritionist, take a 20-minute walk, and create an eating plan.
In my case, one of the goals I established was taking 10,000 steps per day. During the first week, I was enthusiastic about the new goal and managed to make it most of the days. But maintaining that level of effort proved difficult, especially going from a baseline of closer to 6,00 steps. After missing my daily goal a few times, I began to feel discouraged and nearly scrapped the plan altogether.
Fourtunately, I decided to simply adjust the goal to 7,000 steps. Here we could debate whether I was essentially setting the bar low that it was easy to pass over. However, I don’t think that was the case. Rather, I think I made a considered decision to set the goal at a level that was attainable and would not lead to me giving up.
After a month, I was able to routinely reach my steps goal, and so I adjusted it back up, this time to 8,000 steps. After a few months, I raised it again to 9,000 steps. Most days, this is a good and challenging number for me. As I took in more data, I was able to make better decisions about my day. And I also realize that there will be several days within a month when I can’t reach that goal. All of that is part of the calibration process, which has physical and mental elements to it.
Sometimes clients are in life-or-death situations where they have little margin for error. Still, we don’t do anyone any favors by demanding perfection and punishing anything less.
My being able to even consider the number of steps I take in a day is a luxury goal, but the lessons are instructive. I needed time and space to work out the right number, and to gradually see improvement over time.
Calibrating the output means beginning with a reasonable goal, something the person has been successful with in the past or that can be achieved without an enormous amount of effort. Otherwise, we will fall short of the goal and be disappointed. Along the way, we also adjust the output to reflect our results. We use real-time feedback to make decisions about whether the goal is appropriately challenging. In most cases, I think we set the bar higher than is achievable for ourselves and our clients. There is nothing wrong with setting challenging goals, but there is a risk of creating a cycle of failure and initiating a desire to walk away from the goal entirely.
Big goals have to be tackled with small steps. A huge mess cannot be cleaned in a day. To get things back on track, you have to do it in bite-sized pieces.
EXPECTATIONS ARE CRITICAL
Let me next address the concept of expectations, which is something I’m not sure we discuss a lot in recovery. What I mean by expectation is how much effort I anticipate needing to make, and how much time will have to pass, before I see change.
Now with working out, when I went to the gym a few times at irregular intervals and without and real plan, I wouldn’t see any results and would feel disappointed. I assumed that either my body type or whatever was to blame and it just wasn’t going to work. Easier to quit, right? I never had a real sense of how much effort was required or how long it would take to see results (outputs). Someone new in recovery might have that same challenge, where they are unsure of when they can start to expect change, what that change is going to look like, and how much work they have to do to actually experience change.
I won’t pretend that developing a new habit, particularly working out, is easy and doesn’t require a major commitment. It absolutely does. We know the same thing about recovery, that above all else someone needs to be willing to do the work. But it’s not just as simple as saying: Here’s the plan, go and do it. We have to have a focused approach with realistic objectives along the way and the ability to have some anticipation of what’s coming with each stage of the process.
CHANGE CAN BE LONELY
This one feels odd to mention, but it’s become clear that it is a real phenomenon. Setting off on a change journey can be incredibly isolating unless you have a group of people who are supportive and share the journey with you. In my experience, most people don’t want to hear about my workouts. At best, it’s a 30-second conversation filler; at worst, it comes across as me bragging and leaves the other person (or group of people) feeling badly. Others’ interest in my latest workout plan does not match my own, and I understand that. Still, sometimes I want to share my excitement with an accomplishment or my frustration with a personal failure, but instead I swallow it.
I have started to realize why someone new to recovery might feel incredibly isolated as they embark on a new lifestyle. Old friends, family and acquaintances might not share their enthusiasm. Those people might be engaging in the behaviors the individual is trying so hard to change. New, healthy behaviors might mean the loss of many meaningful people. By realizing this, we as helpers can empathize with someone going through these changes. While we might see the experience through a purely positive lens, there could in fact be emotional challenges making the process difficult or even intolerable.
CONCLUSION
Keep in mind these principles with the work we do. Someone who has been struggling with a major mental illness, with substance use disorder, with homelessness, with an abusive relationship, or any other myriad of found issues will not be able to quickly or simply repair those things.
Furthermore, the change process will not be linear. It will look more like waves of improvement, followed by periods of struggle, followed by some more improvement, and so on.
Helping clients calibrate their goals to match their ability and timeline is crucial. Along the way, it’s also a good idea to make further adjustments as needed.
Exercises
Consider the following in terms of your own experiences:
- What changes have you tried to make in your life?
- What prompted these changes?
- Did your attempts work out as you planned, and what were the challenges of implementing these changes?
- How do you maintain healthy habits?
- What prevents you from making other changes?
