Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes walks through the Preparation stage of change, where you decide to act soon and clarify your goals. She covers four concrete exercises: a 50-minute visualization and collage activity, writing a letter from your future self, mapping obstacles on a recovery worksheet, and planning logistics so daily responsibilities don't derail your recovery work.
Hey there everybody, and welcome back to the Addictions and Mental Health Disorders Treatment Manual. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. This video is on unit one, part 17, stages of readiness for change. This stage is preparation. The prior two videos talked about pre contemplation and contemplation. Now we're moving into preparation. In the preparation stage of change, the person is getting ready to make that change. They've identified that there's a problem. They've decided that, okay, I need to do something about it now. I need to figure out what it is I need to do. I need to start getting all my proverbial ducks in a row like packing for a trip. The person is going to do it soon. It's important for you to clarify goals and strategies for change. How are you going to approach this process? Are you going to check into residential? Are you going to start seeing a therapist? Are you going to get a self help book? What is it that you are going to start doing in order to begin this change process and then examine your confidence that you can change? And it's important to believe that you can change and figure out, okay, what is it that I need to do or what resources do I need to build up to ensure my success? Spend about 50 minutes visualizing change. And I love this activity. Get a poster board or you can do it online if you want, but a poster board and make a collage of the positive aspects of recovery. What's the big picture? What is life going to look like when you have achieved your goal of recovery? Ask yourself, what would it be like if I woke up tomorrow and were recovered? We're sober, we're happy. Once you've identified all of those things and you've made this collage and you know this is what I'm headed towards, this is that rich and meaningful life, then it's going to be important to identify the first step toward each of those aspects. So maybe you identify improved relationships. Okay, that's great. What is the first step you need to do to start improving your relationship with Sally? What is the first step you need to take in order to start approve improving your relationship with Tom? Etc. This will start helping you identify ways to use your energy to move toward your rich and meaningful life. Other preparation activities. Howdy from the future. And you don't have to do all three of these different people ha have different preferences in howdy for the future. Again you spend about 50 minutes, write a letter to yourself with a future date and describe what life is like at that point. And when you're writing this letter, be very detailed about how you feel physically, your relationships, what you're doing, your attitude, your mood, et cetera. A different activity. Again, 50 minutes. Write down the directions to what we call destination recovery. That is where you want to go, and then identify any obstacles in the way and those are going to be your construction zones. Explore how you're going to manage all the other facets of your life while on your trip. When you go on a trip, especially a long trip, a lot of times you have to plan for who's going to pick up your mail, how your bills are going to get paid, who's going to feed the dog, water your plants, etc. Same sort of thing in recovery. Recovery is a long process and you're going to be devoting a whole lot of energy to that process. So who can help you out or what do you need to do to make sure that the things that have to get done get done and you can focus on your recovery.
