Strategies for Setting Specific Goals | Unit 1 Part 19 | Addiction and Mental Health Recovery

Hey there everybody, and welcome back to the Addiction and Mental Health Disorders Treatment Manual. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. Today we're talking about setting specific smart goals. In this section, we're going to identify the purpose of setting goals and then discuss what smart goals really are. So why do you care? Well, goal setting is an integral part of behavior change. If you don't set goals, you don't know what you're working toward. So goal setting gives you something to look forward to. Goal setting is something you do every day. You probably set goals in the morning for what you're going to accomplish. You set goals at the gym, you set goals at work, and they help keep you motivated and they help keep you on track. Unfortunately, ineffective goals can have a negative impact on your self esteem. If you set a lot of goals, but they're not effective goals, they're not good goals, they're not set correctly, then you may not achieve your ultimate goals. Then you start feeling hopeless and helpless. So let's start out with a simple activity to see how good you are at goal setting. Write out instructions for for how to do laundry and give it to somebody who doesn't know how to do laundry or pretend they don't know how to do laundry. This may take about 20 minutes. Once you do that, then review and see how complete were your instructions. Did you remember to tell the person to sort their clothes? Did you remember to tell them to look at the tags for care instructions? Make sure you're not going to dry something that's made of wool. Did you explain how to choose which temperature, how much detergent to use, or how to handle stains? And heavily soiled laundry. There's a lot of stuff that if you're doing it all the time, you may take for granted. And there's a lot of little steps that you may overlook that make a big difference in how your laundry turns out. The same thing is true for your recovery. So what are goals and why do we set them? Well, problems are the overarching reason that you probably begin to do something or probably begin to set a goal. You're like, okay, I don't like where I'm at right now, or I don't want to be here anymore, I want to be over here. How do we get there? Goals are broad, abstract solutions. A lot of times where a person says, okay, I am unhealthy, I want to be healthier, I am depressed, that's the problem. The goal is I want to be happy or I have an addiction and I want to get sober. Goal setting helps provide that road map with checkpoints. Just like doing the laundry where you had a checklist. If you do this, then this, then this. When you set goals, you have those checkpoints along the way so you can actually see your progress. And that helps you feel more empowered, and that helps you feel like you're actually moving forward, even if those steps are small. So I mentioned we would talk about what smart goals are. And smart goals aren't just choosing the right goal. Smart stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and relevant, and time limited. So specific means that you are actually defining something that you're going to do. It's not this broad, abstract thing like, I'll be happier. Well, okay, let's get a little bit more specific. What does that look like? Measurable? You're going to be able to see or note, measure a difference. When I was working in community mental health, when we would have audit, the auditors would come in and look at our charts to see if our clients were progressing in their treatment. We had to have measurable goals so they could come in without talking to the people and say, yes, it looks like Jim Bob is progressing, or no, Jim Bob's been doing the same thing for the past six months and doesn't seem to be getting any better. Achievable is also important. We need to make sure that the goals are not too big or not achievable. For example, at my age, is it realistic and achievable for me to go back to medical school? Yeah, probably not. Could I do it? Yeah, but I'd be, you know, really old by the time I cut out. So that might not be something that's achievable in my particular lifetime at this point. In terms of recovery. If somebody has schizophrenia, for example, if they set a goal to get rid of their schizophrenia, that's not achievable. We know that schizophrenia has to do with structural issues in the brain. Therefore, they can get their schizophrenia in remission, but they're not going to get rid of it. And finally, time limited. We only have so much time. We can go doing something that is difficult before we need a reward. When you start pushing it too far, we go into what's called behavior strain, and your motivation starts to kind of dwindle. So it's important to make sure that each goal is time limited. So you're very frequently stopping looking, noting your progress, and getting some sort of reinforcement or reward for the changes that you've made. It's also Helpful to phrase your goals as adding a positive instead of removing a negative. If the problem is depression, then the goal would be happiness. So I want to be happier. So ask yourself if I'm not X or if I don't have this problem, what I am I or what's different possible goals people may choose to start with when they're starting to set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic time limited goals. I want to have more energy. I want improved sleep. I want to have reduced pain or improved health. I want to have reduced cravings. Yeah, I know that one is a negative, but I couldn't think of a positive for that one. I'll feel happier, more empowered and content. I'll have better control of my emotions, I. E. Fewer meltdowns, I'll have better control of my thoughts, fewer ruminations, fewer intrusive thoughts, better concentration. I'll have improved problem solving, more optimism, improved self esteem or improved assertiveness and communication skills. All of these are goals that or sub goals of the recovery process. The recovery process. Getting happier and sober, if you will. Well, that's great, but there are a lot of goals that you need to achieve along the way. There's a lot of different things you need to do. So instead of having this recovery out here that you're probably not going to achieve for a while, we want to have goals that you can achieve in a shorter period of time that help you move toward that larger goal. So let's do an example. What's the overall goal for treatment? Well, in this example, we're going to use the problem as depression. And my goal to feel happier. I want to feel happier emotions most days. So what does that look like in order to be measurable? You know, if somebody came and looked at me and said, are you happier than you were yesterday? Who knows? You know, that's a very vague concept. I might even have difficulty going, well, I don't know if I'm happier than I was yesterday or not. So we're going to identify observable targets. How will I know when I'm happier? Physically, I will have more energy to do stuff and will be eating healthier. So I might lose some weight. Okay, that's observable. Affectively or emotionally, I will feel hopeful and empowered and will not mind getting out of bed. Okay, that's. Those things can be answered with yes or no. Do you feel hopeful? Do you feel. Do you feel empowered? Did you mind getting out of bed? Cognitively, I will be able to concentrate better and relationally I'll have more energy and desire to nurture my relationships, which will give me support and encouragement. So I've identified some things that are going to be different once I'm happier that way. I have targets that I can look at and I can say, yes, I've achieved that. Yes, this is starting to happen. So spend about 10 minutes and identify a goal that you want to start working on. And you can go back to this one back here. More energy, improved sleep, reduced cravings, and just pick one and then identify physically, what will be different when you have achieved that goal. Affectively or emotionally, how will you feel, feel different when you've achieved that goal? Cognitively, what will be different about your attitude, your concentration, or your ruminations? And relationally, how will your relationships change when you've achieved that goal? Okay, so once you have sort of defined what that's going to look like, then we've, then we need to say, how do we get there? So you're going to learn about your overall problem and the goal. So you're going to learn about what causes depression, what treatments are out there for depression? What can I do to address my depression? You know, it's important to know what's causing the problem. Just like when your car goes on the fritz or you get sick, knowing what's causing the problem helps us figure out how to treat it, but it's also important to identify the solution. How are we going to know when you've achieved your solution? If you've got the flu, then one of the benchmarks for recovery is your fever is gone, you're back to 98.6. So one of the benchmarks for depression or for moving towards happiness is more energy. That was one of the things that we defined. So physically, does the person have more energy? Does the person. Well, we'll stick with that for right now, and then you're going to learn about your symptoms, causes and triggers for the problem and the goal. So the problem is, in this particular instance, depression. So what are your symptoms of depression? What does depression look like for you? What causes those symptoms for you and what triggers your depression? And causes and triggers can kind of be the same thing sometimes, but it's important to identify what is going on that is leading you to feel depressed. It's also important for you to look at the solution. And, and you started identifying this in the last activity. What are your symptoms of happiness? When you're happy, what will that look like physically, affectively, cognitively, relationally? And what triggers those things in you? What triggers your happiness? Because it's not just about eliminating the things that cause depression. It's also about actual adding things that promote happiness. Identify ways to address your specific problem, the symptoms, the causes, and the triggers. And then pick one way, one thing you're going to start doing today to address two of your two or three of your specific symptoms. A lot of times there is one thing that you can do that will address a lot of different things. Like. Like when you're sick, one thing you can do is get plenty of rest. That's going to help address a lot of the symptoms that are going on. So pick one thing that you're going to do. Whether it's to address your. Your affect, your mood or your concentration or your energy, whatever it is, what is it that you're going to start doing today? Spend 30 minutes using the goal you identified already. Whatever goal you picked, describe the general and specific things you already know about that goal or about that problem and that goal, what causes it for you and what your symptoms are. And what do you still need to learn? Maybe you've had depression all your life and you have no idea what causes it. You know what your symptoms are and you know some of the things that make it worse for you, but you don't really understand what's causing it. Okay, so that's something you may need to learn.