Honor Self-Destructive Habit Clients’ Unique Quitting Styles

We have been working for decades with clients presenting with self-destructive habits like self-injury, substance abuse, bulimia and binge eating, problem gambling, and cyber-porn. Many of these clients have already had multiple unsuccessful treatment experiences and often are pressured to see us by their intimate partners or parents to eliminate their problematic habits. Two major reasons why they had had negative treatment outcomes was because there was a mismatch of the treatment approaches and modalities tried and the stage of readiness to change they were in and the therapists or treatment teams involved did not honor their theories of change and goals. With clients that have long careers of engaging in the aforementioned self-destructive habits, they are typically in the precontemplative stage of readiness for change and their habits have helped them to cope with some very real internal and environmental stressors. If they have experienced some serious consequences because of their choice self-destructive habits, they may be in the contemplative stage of readiness to change and are beginning to see how the habits have cost them in a negative way. They still may be ambivalent about giving up their choice habits and are not ready to pursue total abstinence goals. Therefore, the client may be more willing to negotiate an initial cutting back goal for one or more of their choice habits. It is up to the client to determine their unique quitting styles and methods for reducing their involvement with their choice habits as an experiment for the discovery of what works and how consequences due to their choice habits are being reduced in all areas of their lives. We have are clients keep track in a habit diary what works during periods of abstinence, identify potential obstacles (people, places, other triggers) that might get in the way of their cutting back from their choice habits, and how they rebounded from temporary derailments and got back on track with their initial cutting back goal. The habit diary is empowering for clients in that they can follow their increased resourcefulness, resilience, and courage over time (Selekman & Beyebach, 2013).

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