A short instructional talk (YouTube video transcript) by Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes explaining self-efficacy (self-confidence) and its role in addiction and mental health recovery. The speaker defines efficacy across domains—managing physical health, emotions, thoughts/learning, environment, and relationships—describes how low efficacy undermines engagement and increases relapse risk, and prompts self-assessment and skill-seeking to build confidence and likelihood of recovery.
Chapters
Hey there everybody, and welcome back to the addiction and Mental health disorders treatment manual. This is unit one, part 23. Today we're going to start discussing how to enhance self efficacy or your feeling that you actually can do this. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. Efficacy is your confidence that you are competent or you are able, able to accomplish your goal. Efficacy, you want to have the belief that you can manage your physical health and conditions. You believe that, hey, you know, I can identify this and I can manage my medications, I can manage my treatments. That doesn't mean you have to know how to do it all by yourself. That's what therapists and doctors and sponsors and everybody else are there for to help you along the way. But the belief that you can implement these things with or without help is important. You want to have the belief that you have the ability to manage your moods. A lot of people in recovery are experiencing what we call emotional disregulation. They go from flat to furious or flat to frantic like that. Instead of having, having feeling okay a lot of the time and then getting irritated or getting a little bit worried, it's either all or nothing. And that can be really exhausting and very overwhelming when it happens. So in recovery you're going to develop this sense of confidence that you actually can manage your emotions. You want to have the feeling that you've got the ability to manage your thoughts and your learning. You're going to figure out the things that negatively impact your ability to concentrate, that affect your mood or affect your attitude. So remember, mood is how you feel. Whether you're happy, you're sad, you're angry. Your attitude is how you think, whether you're optimistic or pessimistic. You want to feel like you have the ability to manage your environment, that you can feel safe wherever you're at and that you can manage your social interactions or your relationships. You want to believe that you have the ability to form healthy relationships. Now for a lot of people these are goals that they're going to work toward. It may not be something they have right now and that's okay. But recognizing when you feel like you have the ability to manage all these things, you are well on your way to solid recovery. Self efficacy involves judgments of personal capabilities and chant and that change according to the task involved. You may believe that you can manage your day to day health if you know as things go, if you get a cold, you can manage that. But then when you start getting really sick, when you get a fever, you may not believe you can manage that anymore, which is when you go to the doctor, you're still managing it because you're reaching out and you're asking for help, but you recognize you can't do it alone. People who lack confidence in their ability to recover are less likely to engage in recovery tasks or keep on going. Persevere when faced with obstacles and challenges. So basically, if you don't have confidence in the process or in yourself, then you're probably going to have a low frustration tolerance and be more likely to relapse. Lacking confidence in daily life and anxiety or depression have a serious impact on your overall functional status and your willingness to do things. So if you're not confident that, then it's going to contribute to your anxiety, it's going to worsen your anxiety. And when you feel anxious a lot of the time, eventually you may also start feeling hopeless and helpless or depressed. So this all feeds into itself. Higher self efficacy or confidence means a high probability of success, which could make you more likely to be willing to try and do things. If you have confidence that you can make this work, then you're going to be more likely to get started. Self efficacy influences your level of effort and attitude towards difficulties and the choices that you make. If you feel confident, if you have efficacy, then you're more likely to persevere and keep going even when it's tough. If you don't have self efficacy or confidence, then when it starts getting tough, you may throw up your hands and say, forget it. You may have a very low frustration tolerance. Self efficacy affects your way of thinking, which could determine whether you are willing to take action. People who don't feel confident, who don't have a sense of self efficacy, often stay in pre contemplation because they're looking at it going, I'm hopeless, I'm hopeless. There's nothing I can do. Why should I even try? Spend about 50 minutes asking yourself, do I have the skills and ability to make positive change in my life? And remember your, your efficacy is very dependent on different things. So the positive change, what positive changes do you have the skills and abilities to address and for the changes that you want to make, the positive changes that you want to make. If you don't have the skills and abilities right now, what do you need and where can you get them? You know, counseling, support groups, books? Where is it that you can find these tools and skills in order to make the changes that you want? Just like if you wanted to start a new hobby like woodworking, you know, I've always thought about woodworking, but there are so many tools and skills that are needed that I don't have right now. I could not effectively build a cabinet because I don't have those skills or tools. I know where I could start finding them. I get a book, I'd learn about it. I'd probably take some classes. Same thing is true for recovery. This is not magic. This is a learning process. In terms of the positive changes that you want to make in your life, what would increase your self confidence in each one of those changes? What could help you have that can do attitude, thinking. All right, I might be able to do this. How likely do you think it is that you can get sober and why is it that that you feel that way? If you feel like you are, you know, 90% chance that you can get sober, great. Why is it that you feel that way? You have a lot of self efficacy. If you think it's 50, 50, you know, that's a little bit more concerning. Why do you feel that way and what skills and abilities might you need in order to get up to an 80% or a 90%? Same thing with getting happy and getting healthy. I know those are very vague goals, but what is your belief that you can actually achieve those things and what skills and tools do you need to add in order to increase the likelihood that you'll be able to achieve those goals?
