Let's Talk: Making Change - Preparing and Taking Action

[Leonarda]

Preparing for Change

When preparing for making change in your life, it’s important to be realistic and set small goals initially that can be easily achieved. What are the barriers to you moving forward?
Helpful Strategies that may work for you are about addressing :
- Your emotions, anger, shame, denial. What is going on for you and how are these strong emotions linked with your substance or alcohol use
- What boundaries have you put down, for yourself or for others around you ? For example, maybe the key to your drinking or substance use is related to your spouse or friends that keep insisting that you drink or use with them.
- Creating a therapeutic alliance. What supports do you have, which family members or friends will support you in recovery?
It’s good practice to identify support systems that are around you – sometimes people that we least expect to be supportive end up being our rock and someone we can lean on…

Common Thinking and Behavioural Errors
Here are some thinking patterns that may need change in terms of your recovery… can you identify with any of these?
- Seeing things only one way; thinking in black and white terms
- Blaming other people, blaming yourself for decisions that you have made and feeling that you can’t move forward.
- Feeling stuck and at the same time, scared to move forward, saying ‘I can’t do this.’
- Feeling inferior or thinking that ‘this can’t possibly be happening to me, I thought my life was under control.’
- Wanting gratification; not being able to say no.
And which you could replace with :
- Looking at things more holistically, not blaming anyone but accepting it for what it is.
- Accepting feeling stuck and uncomfortable and being confident that even baby steps can make a difference. Telling yourself, ‘I’ve got this.’
- Accepting that life is chaos, no one has control and putting it out to the universe that you are accepting change and being the catalyst in making this change for yourself.

Here are some links that might be really helpful in preparing to make changes and of course we are always here, along with your peers in supporting your journey 
https://m1psychology.com/acceptance-and ... nce-abuse/
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/addi ... iction.htm