Partners for Collaborative Solutions
Self-Changers: Secrets From the True Experts
In our clinical practices, we regularly work with clients plagued by serious self-destructive difficulties, such as self-injury, eating disorders, substance abuse, and problem gambling. Many of these clients had either stopped engaging in their choice self-destructive habits on their own prior to being seen by us, had patterns of going for long stretches of time in the past remaining abstinent from their habits, or recently slipped back into them following a stressful life event or loss. Rather than viewing these clients as being “in denial” “minimizing their difficulties,” or just plain “lying,” we prefer to take a deep dive inquiry into their expertise about how they were able to go in some cases for months of refraining from caving into their choice self-destructive habits, which at one point, may have been occurring multiple times per day. Not only does this kind of conversation help create a therapeutic climate ripe for change with them but also it invites the clients to compliment themselves on their resourcefulness. Over the years, we have been carefully documenting the secrets of what worked for these self-changers. Below, we list some of their major secrets and wisdom about the self-changing process:
- Publicly pledge to family members, their intimate couple partners, and close friends their strong desire and plans to quit their self-destructive habits
- Actively solicit from family members, their intimate couple partners, and friends creative ideas and solutions about how to conquer their self-destructive habits and stay quit
- Structure building: “Keeping busy, keeps me out of trouble!”
- Actively taking steps to strengthen their relationship bonds with their intimate partners and/or parents
- Increasing involvement in healthy and meaningful activities during leisure times
Clearly, we can learn a great deal from these self-changers and there is much more to know about how the constructive steps mentioned above contributed to their natural self-healing capacities. Self-changers ground in reality two important clinical principles: 1) No problem happens all of the time and 2) Clients are truly the experts and our expertise is in tapping their expertise.