I counsel  lots of people who are trying to get other people to behave differently. This may be a parent who is trying to get their kids to behave better or do their chores.  It may be someone who is trying to get their spouse to treat them more with more respect.  It may also be someone who is trying to change their own behavior.

Whether you’re trying to change your own behavior or someone else’s, you’ll usually get better results if you focus on rewarding or celebrating the things they are doing right rather than criticizing the things that are going wrong.  For example, if your spouse is on the sloppy side and tends to leave things laying around, watch for the next time they put something away without being asked and make sure you compliment or thank them for it.  For example, “I love it when I see you put things away!  That’s so helpful”.  I know it sounds kind of cheesy but it works.  The more you do it the more likely they are to keep putting things away.  Then you can start asking them to do small things and compliment that too.  For example, “Can you do me a big favor and put away those tools you have on the counter”.  If they do it, show appreciation.

If we try to get someone to change behavior by nagging or criticizing, they might develop a habit of doing it, but only because they think you’ll be negative if they don’t.  You really don’t want your teenager to constantly remind themselves of how you’re going to complain if they don’t pick up their room.  It’s better if they have the memory of you being appreciative when you walk by and notice how clean their room is and comment on how mature or responsible they are.

This works on yourself as well.  If you’re trying to develop a new habit, take reading for example,  try to set a time when you will read for at least a minute or two, then give yourself a mental pat on the back for doing the thing you said you were going to do.  I’ve been working on this myself.  I have several habits I’m trying to train myself to do.  Rather than berating myself for not doing something, I focus on celebrating myself when I “do the thing”.  It works.  When I feel successful for doing one thing, I’m eager to keep doing it and I usually do even more constructive things while I’m in such a good mood.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, teenagers, and adults.  He can help with anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, relationship problems, and more.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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Therapy doesn’t work if you’re not going to try the ideas you get from therapy. If nothing changes, then nothing changes. So are you a failure if you go to counseling and don’t use the ideas from counseling? Not likely. Are you lazy? Probably no more so than average.

One of the reasons people don’t follow through with ideas from therapy is that you don’t have a specific plan to try them out. You think, that’s a good idea and I’m going to start doing that and see how it goes (sometime). From a behavioral standpoint, there are a few things that have to be in place for a new behavior to take hold. You have to set up a cue, or prompt, for when specifically you are going to do the new behavior. There also has to be a reward for doing the behavior. Some times we call this a reinforcement of the behavior. This can be just telling yourself you did a good job, or doing a little victory dance. It could be marking it on your calendar or starting a tally system where you make an “X” for every time you do it and keep looking at all the “X”‘s you made.

For some new behaviors you need to rearrange your physical environment to be frequently reminded of the new behavior you want to do. But if you don’t set up a reminder system, or prompt, you’re not likely to do the new behavior.

This is why after I help clients figure out what new behavior they are going to add that will help them get closer to a better life, I then ask them when specifically they are going to do it. Usually I want them to start it the same day as their appointment, not wait until tomorrow. I want to know specifically when they are going to start doing it. If they say, right after dinner, I want to know when specifically “after dinner”. When is dinner officially over? Is it when they put their fork down? Is it when they put the last dish in the dishwasher? Is it when they close the dishwasher door? You need a specific moment that prompts you to do the behavior.

For example, one of my clients wanted to started working out at home every day. He decided that it would be good to add it to his morning routine. Reflecting on his morning routine he recalled that he always drinks a glass of milk in the morning and thought after drinking the milk would be a good time to start. I pressed him about what the precise end of “drinking milk” was so he had a clear cue to walk to his workout area. He concluded that putting the glass in the sink indicated the end of this behavior so we figured out that he could “clunk” the glass down firmly to highlight the end of “drinking milk” and that was his new cue to walk to his weight bench. We next agreed that he would purposely drink milk and clunk the glass down when he got home from his appointment that day and then walk to his weight bench.

Doing the behavior the same day helped reinforce the new sequence for the next day. After he went to his weight bench he celebrated his success with a “woohoo!” to reinforce his success. Guess what? The next day he drank milk and remembered to clunk down the glass with vigor and walked straight to his weight bench. He was able to stick with the new habit by having a very clear cue to start the behavior.

If you’re not trying out good ideas from your therapy sessions, it may not be that you’re not motivated. It may be that you haven’t set up good and specific prompts to do the new behavior.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, teenagers, and adults.  He can help with anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, relationship problems, and more.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

The post One Reason Therapy Fails appeared first on Turnabout Counseling.

For example,  if you’re socially anxious, I want to know how you want to see yourself in the future.  If you see yourself as fearful in social situations, worried about how people will judge you, then how will you view yourself when things change for the better?  Maybe you’ll see yourself as brave even when you make mistakes at work.  Maybe you want to be someone who is comfortable in stressful situations.  Or, maybe you want to be someone who can take calculated risks.

We don’t just want to change behaviors, we want to change your identity.  We want you to change how you see yourself.  You probably have a lot of negative things you think about yourself and this affects how you interact with the world around you.  When you make a determination about how you want to be different, you start changing your identity for the better.  

Change Your Identity with Small Changes

James Clear, in his book, “Atomic Change”, comments that there are three areas of change, 1) Outcomes, 2) process, and 3) Identity.  Most people start with trying to change the outcomes.  For example, they may want to quit smoking cigarettes.  However, starting with the outcome in mind, can make it hard to change the behavior of smoking.  Changing the process (how you will quit smoking) can be a step closer in the right direction.  But changing your identity is probably the best way to change the process, and then the outcomes change on their own.

Let’s take another example.  Let’s say you want to get better at keeping your house in order.  Cleaning the house over the weekend is an outcome.  Putting things away, vacuuming, doing the laundry etc is a process.  However, what if you decide to start thinking of yourself as a fastidious person who likes orderliness?  Then you will find you can keep this new identity about yourself going all day long. 

Start With Small Changes

You may start noticing those things you tend to leave “undone” around the house and start taking small, frequent steps to keep things put away.  You walk through a room and notice some dishes on a table and grab them as you walk into the kitchen.  Once you’re in the kitchen you notice the box of cereal you left on the counter and decide to put it in the cupboard.  Feeling good about what you just did, you walk out of the kitchen and take something from the kitchen that can be put away elsewhere.

Changing how you think of yourself—changing your identity— can lead to small sustainable changes in your behavior.  These are new habits you develop that start to add up to bigger habits and behaviors.  Soon, you can be that new identity you were afraid couldn’t happen.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, teenagers, and adults.  He can help with anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, relationship problems, and more.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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People Engage in Behavior that Works

In my Grand Rapids counseling practice, I work with people who are frustrated with not being treated with respect.  This could be a mother being disrespected by their teenage son, a husband who is being treated poorly by his wife, or someone who is being steamrolled by a boss or coworker.

One of the things we do is start with learning how to say “No” effectively and mean it.  This may mean strengthening your self-esteem and practicing specific ways to say “no” to people that fit your personality.  It often means learning how to effectively establish boundaries with people.  

Why People Treat You with Disrespect

For the most part, we all perform behaviors repeatedly because those behaviors work for us.  When our behaviors get us something we want, we will repeat the behavior.  In fact, it would be silly not to repeat a behavior that works for us.  So, if I have learned that taking advantage of your kindness gets you to do something for me, I will keep doing it.  It is only when that doesn’t work that I will do something else.  

Let’s say your teenage son learns he can ignore your threats to punish him for being disrespectful because nothing actually happens. He still gets to do the thing he wanted with no consequences.  He will continue to get comfortable doing this and do it more often.  So, create a reasonable negative consequence for this behavior that you apply consistently. He will learn that his behavior no longer gets him what he wants and will learn to adapt his behavior.

Here’s another example, let’s say your significant other belittles you when you are with friends.  They may be getting laughs from others or feel superior while doing this. But this only works if you stay around to be belittled.  If you end the conversation or leave when they start belittling you, they learn that if they want you to stick around they have to at least not treat you with disrespect.  For example,  I sometimes advise my adult clients to politely but firmly end conversations with their parent when they start being negative.  When they do this consistently, how quickly the parent learns to be more respectful in how they speak.

Taking Away the Benefits of Disrespect

If you are dealing with someone who treats you with disrespect, think about what gains their behavior gets them. See if you can change the outcome so that the disrespect does not work for them anymore.  However, be aware not to be disrespectful yourself or they may benefit from pointing out how rude you are being.  

If you’d like help getting others to treat you with respect, contact me to discuss how Solution Focused Therapy can help.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, counseling for teenagers, and adults.  He provides counseling for anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, and relationship problems.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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