make this the year you actually keep your new year’s resolutions

by Dr. Kathleen Moore

How many times have you vowed, while watching the ball drop and listening to the New Year’s countdown, “THIS is the year I’m finally going to stop [insert undesirable behavior here] and start [insert desired behavior here]!” Your holiday guilt provides enough momentum to carry your new lifestyle change about two weeks into January before your resolve evaporates and you’re back to your old unhealthy habits.

A lifestyle change is not easy to make or maintain. Some people require several tries before new behavior becomes a regular part of their lives.

But research is starting to show us how to avoid relapsing. Marlatt and Gordon at the University of Washington have studied the crucial point at which, after successfully stopping a bad habit, you give up your new controlled behavior and fall back into the old behavior. A slight slip is called a “lapse;” total, continuous backsliding is called a “relapse.”

So why do between 50% and 90% of successes eventually relapse?

• Sometimes after making a change, the demands of maintaining it seem to outweigh the benefits of the change.
• We feel deprived, victimized, resentful, and blame ourselves.
• It occurs to us that our old behavior (smoking, eating, inactivity) would help us feel better.

Marlatt pointed out that:
1. The long-range benefits of maintaining behavior change are minimized or overlooked during the first days of old habit avoidance and,
2. The fantasized immediate result of engaging in the old habit is intensified.

However, if we understand that the lapse is a natural result of our resistance to change, we can go back to our new behavior with minimal guilt. We need to understand that there is no magic. It is important to learn and use relapse prevention techniques.

Relapse Prevention

Preventing relapse requires that we develop a plan to maintain the new behavior. The plan needs to include diversion activities, coping skills, and emotional support. The decision to maintain a new behavior is aided by knowing: (1) there is a difference between a lapse and a relapse; and (2) continued coping while maintaining the new behavior will eventually reduce the desire to relapse.

Coping skills can make the difference when the desire to relapse is intense:

• Ask for help from an experienced friend or peer.
• Use relaxation skills to reduce the intensity of anxiety.
• Learn to identify the warning signs– the quicker you learn to spot these signs, the sooner you can take positive action.
• Develop alternative activities.
• Avoid situations of known danger to maintaining new behavior.
• Find other ways of dealing with negative emotional states.
• Rehearse responses to predictably difficult events.
• Reward yourself in ways that don’t undermine your efforts.

Marlatt and his colleagues recommended several specific strategies for avoiding relapses:

• Learn to recognize your own high-risk situations. Monitor what’s going on when you are tempted or slip a little. Observe your relapse fantasies or temptations. Realize that getting into high-risk situations is a result of a series of your own decisions. No alcoholic ends up in a bar with his drinking buddies without making many choices leading to that high-risk environment. Identify those decisions or choice points; they are your means of maintaining control and staying out of future trouble. As the saying goes, “If you don’t want to slip, stay out of slippery places.”

• Practice coping with unavoidable high-risk situations. Think about what you could say and do when faced with unavoidable temptation. Observe how others handle similar situations. Role play these situations repeatedly until you are sure you can handle them.

• To avoid a relapse, prepare in advance for a lapse. Rehearse strategies for dealing with a lapse. If you slip, limit the feeling that you’re a hopeless failure. Instead, just admit you’ve made a mistake. Make an agreement to limit the slip (to one smoke, one dessert, one hour of TV, one drink). Remember that slips do occur. Don’t let feelings of guilt or failure snowball into feelings of hopeless despair so that you continue to (smoke, eat, drink, procrastinate). Stay calm and learn from the experience. Learn your weaknesses and how to overcome them. Recommit yourself. Get out of the situation (leave the bar, go back to studying, throw away the remaining cigarettes, cake, drugs, etc.). If necessary, call a friend.

• Ask friends to help. Friends can steer you away from temptations, challenge your over-confidence, support your new behaviors and interests, and come quickly to your rescue if you falter.

• Reorganize your life. Learn how to meet the needs behind the unwanted behavior in better, healthier ways. Marlatt and other researchers recommend learning a broad range of self-help skills, including personal problem solving skills, behavior control techniques, increased self-awareness (to recognize rationalizations and denial), and encouragement from friends or a self-help group to vigilantly guard against unwanted choices and actions.

Change is most productively viewed as a cycle rather than an all or nothing step. People may require several attempts before successfully accomplishing a lasting behavior change. Many people make the same New Year’s resolution for several years before they “get it right.” Smokers typically make 3 or more attempts to quit before succeeding. Research has shown that relapsers don’t necessarily go back to “square one” – often they learn from their mistakes, think of a better approach, and build up their courage to try again. So relapse is a normal part of the change process. This does not mean that relapse is desirable or expected. It simply means that change is difficult, and it is unreasonable to expect to modify a habit perfectly without any slips. Try hard to avoid relapsing, but if you do, don’t give up.

The bottom line is that we engage in unhealthy or unproductive habits because they make us feel good or reduce anxiety. It takes hard work to make a permanent behavior change, but by replacing the old behavior with new, more positive coping strategies, identifying your high-risk situations, and continuously focusing on the benefits of the change you’re making, you CAN gain control.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kathleen Moore has a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology, and currently works as an administrator at the University of Rochester. Contact her at kmoore@rochesterhealthyliving.com.