The Stages of Change
January 23, 2009 by Kathie Keeler
Filed under Daily Habits, Parents of Substance Abusers
Did you know that people change in stages? This applies to most every type of change. Whether you are trying to improve yourself via New Year's Resolutions, give up a bad habit, or lessen the grip that addictions hold on your life. Understanding these stages will help you to ease up a bit on yourself, be less hard on yourself.
James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente developed a "Stages of Change Model" in the late 1970s and early 1980s when they were studying how smokers gave up their habits. These stages can be useful for anyone who is trying to make changes in their lives. By breaking a change down into stages, taking baby steps, it's much easier to accomplish permanent change.
Briefly, these stages are:
1. Precontemplation--At this stage the person is not yet acknowledging that a problem exists.
2. Contemplation--The person is aware that there is a problem, but is not ready or sure that they want to make changes.
3. Preparation/Determination--The person gets ready to make changes.
4. Action/Willpower--Actual changes are made in this stage.
5. Maintenance--The person maintains the changes.
6. Relapse--The person returns to old behaviors and abandons the changes. Relapse is fairly common if you're working to overcome an addiction.
You can use this model for your benefit by assessing which stage you are in. And give yourself some credit! Many people become very hard on themselves when they are not able to sustain new behaviors for long periods of time. But, consider this: the average person fails five times before making changes with New Year's resolutions!
Please remember that wherever you are, that's OK. And don't expect yourself to progress neatly from one stage to the next. Most people jump all over the place. So, it's not unusual to see a person go from contemplation to action to preparation to relapse to precontemplation. And some people never relapse. But don't be hard on yourself if you do return to old behaviors. Getting down on yourself only makes it harder to try again later.
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