Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes walks through six questions about how behavior change affects your relationships and self-image. The activity explores why old habits felt socially rewarding, how change might trigger rejection, and concrete ways to build motivation across health, energy, mood, thinking, and relationships.
Foreign. Hey there everybody. Welcome back to the Addiction and Mental Health Disorders treatment manual. This is unit one, part 14, enhancing relational motivation. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. In this part, we're going to explore the final component of motivation and that's relational motivation. Foreign. You're going to spend about 50 minutes thinking about how the new behavior, whatever you're trying to do, whatever change you're trying to make, how is that going to increase your self acceptance? How is that going to make you feel better about yourself and approve of yourself more? How is it going to increase other people's approval of you more, you know, and their desire to be around you? For example, if you are angry all the time, people may love you dearly, but they don't want to be around you because it is unpleasant for them. So how could changing that behavior increase their approval of your behaviors and improve your relationships? How is the new behavior going to increase your acceptance of other people and your willingness to be compassionate and give people the benefit of the doubt instead of seeing them as a threat? How is the old behavior, whatever it is, in opposition to your self concept? How is whatever you're doing right now, how it, how is it not something that really describes you very well or the you that you want to be? How does the old behavior lead to rejection, isolation, or cause relationship issues? Even something as seemingly benign as sleeping all the time can cause relationship problems. Because you're not able to be there for to engage in relationship activities, to nurture relationships. It may lead to rejection because people don't understand why you're not getting out of bed. They can't wrap your head or wrap their head around it, which can lead you to feeling isolated. And because nobody understands, how is the old behavior socially rewarding? Some of the behaviors that you may be trying to change were socially rewarding. Drinking, smoking, for example, risk taking behaviors, sometimes the very things that help you feel part of a crowd or are rewarding in some way socially because they reduce your anxiety so you can better mingle with others actually contribute to your emotional ill health and or your physical ill health in the long run. How could you achieve these same goals without relapsing? And it's important to recognize that some people are not going to embrace your change. If one of the things you're trying to change is your attitude so you're not as negative and pessimistic and angry anymore, then the people that you used to hang around with who are negative and pessimistic and angry may back off. A little bit because they don't know how to relate to you now. So who else could you interact with? Who else could you get your social needs met with without having to say, okay, fine, you know, when I'm with them, I'll act a certain way and then when I'm with other people, I'll act a different way. How might the new behavior cause rejection? And I think we just kind of talked about that. When you are giving up substances, for example, not everybody feels comfortable drinking or using around somebody who is sober. So there may be some changes in the types of activities you engage in or with your friends. So it's going to be important to figure out how to replace those or how to modify those. Even if you are wanting to hang out with those people still and they're willing to respect your recovery choices, then you may engage in different activities. You may not go tailgating together anymore, but you may go hiking together on different weekend days. In what ways did your relationships and self esteem or negative self esteem contribute to the development of your addictive behaviors? Your mood issues or your illness relapses? Your stress related illnesses in the past? This final activity kind of summarizes the pacer motivation. Remember at the beginning of this I asked you to identify one behavior that you were going to change. In this we're going to look at recovery in general. The more ways you can find to motivate yourself, the easier it will be to maintain your motivation. So in terms of recovery in general, recovery from depression or anxiety or addiction, or all of the above, how will it improve your health, your energy and your pain and your inflammation levels, what can you do to ensure you have the energy to focus on recovery affectively? How is recovery going to help you feel happier and what are you excited about? What are you looking forward to when you finally have gotten into this place of early recovery and you're starting to feel the benefits, what do you what's the one of the things that you're most excited about? What can you do each day to increase your happiness? There is a lot to be said for filling time. If you are doing things that are making you happy, then there is less time to be doing things or thinking about things that are making you unhappy. Not to say that you're going to be doing things constantly to pacify yourself, but it is important to infuse some happiness in your life. When you do things that make you happy, it increases your dopamine, it increases your serotonin, it increases your norepinephrine, which are all supportive of your recovery regardless of what you're trying to recover from. Cognitive how will recovery improve your attitude? Change your stinking thinking or your negativity and help you make better decisions and improve your focus and concentration? Remember, when you're stressed or you're sleep deprived, your focus and concentration is going to be in the crapper. When you are stressed and sleep deprived, norepinephrine and dopamine are low and those are two of your neurochemicals that are essential for focus and concentration. What thoughts can I add or can you add that will help you stay motivated for this change? Think about developing a list of affirmations that you have that you repeat to yourself each day and when things get tough. And what distress tolerant thoughts can you add? Those are thoughts that you have when you are really having a craving or not wanting to do whatever you've got to do and you're feeling distressed, you're feeling frustrated or angry or anxious. What distress tolerant thoughts can you tell yourself? Like I just need to get started and I'll get it over with and then I'll feel a lot better. For example, environmental motivation. What can you add to your environment to keep you motivated? And that can be a collage that illustrates your rich and meaningful life. That can be pictures of places that you hope to go. That can be pictures of family and friends that you want to improve your relationships with when you are, when you're feeling better. And what can you take from your environment to prevent being triggered? Now for some people that may even mean taking from their environment the Internet. They may find that. Or you may find that having 24,7 access to the Internet actually contributes to a lot of your distress. But that's a personal choice. You need to look around your environment and think what is it in my environment that adds stress, that that adds distress that triggers me in some way and can I either fix it or eliminate it? And finally, relationships. How will recovery improve your relationships with other people? How will recovery improve your relationship with yourself or your self esteem? And which people are in your life or might be back? Might you be able to get back in your life that can encourage you on your recovery journey?
