Step 2: You must be willing, on your own, to want to change the unhealthy binge, compulsive, habitual and addictive behaviors. Unless you want to change the behaviors for your own sake rather than to please someone else, you will lack the strength of motivation and conviction to follow through with the decision and behaviors needed to change.
Step 3: You must be willing to admit to yourself that to change any habit or old behavior is a difficult task and you must be willing to set realistic goals for yourself.
Step 4: Once you identify the target behaviors to be changed, monitor yourself for the next month and keep a daily log of your behaviors. Each night put the log in your journal and answer the following questions for each occurrence of the target behaviors:
A. How often did you engage in the target (binge, compulsive, habit, addiction) behavior today?
B. What did you do? What were the dimensions and size of the behavior? How much time was spent on the behavior?
C. Were there other people around or were you hiding?
D. What was your emotional tone while you engaged in the behavior?
E. Was there any significant event or cue preceding your engaging in this behavior?
F. Where do you commonly engage in this behavior?
G. How do you feel after you have completed this behavior?
Step 5: After you spend a month of daily logging in these target behaviors, look for a pattern present in the behaviors and determine:
Location of behaviors, e.g., usually in home, kitchen, bar, work site, restaurant, etc.
Time of day, e.g., usually in morning, evening, at lunch, after work, etc.
Day of week, or month, e.g., on Fridays only, on pay days only, everyday, weekends only, etc.
Length of time engaged in behavior, e.g., usually thirty minutes or less, six hours or more, etc.
Emotional tone preceding engaging in the behavior, e.g., usually anxious, depressed, happy, stressed, etc.
Emotional tone after engaging in the behavior, e.g., usually guilt, remorse, fear, depression, anger, disappointment, etc.
Social environment where engaging in behavior, e.g., hiding, alone, with a specific person every time, in a social setting, etc.
Step 6: After you review the log and look for patterns, perform a behavior chain analysis on selected events to see if the patterns you identified in Step 5 can be further clarified or expanded upon.
Step 7: Now that your log, pattern analysis, and behavior chains are completed, determine which of these next corrective actions need to be taken.
A. What needs to be restructured at home, at work and in the community to reduce the ease with which you engage in these behaviors? How can you make it more difficult for yourself to engage in these behaviors? How can you block yourself from freely engaging in these behaviors?
B. What alterations need to be made in your daily, weekly and monthly schedule in order to reduce the opportunities for these target behaviors to occur?
C. What self-monitoring or social support systems do you need to establish to help control or stop thinking about engaging in these behaviors?
D. What are some rational steps you can take to alter or control the impact of the emotional cues which typically lead to these behaviors? What thought-stopping techniques do you need to use to avoid thinking about the behaviors?
E. What do you need to do to continuously remind yourself of your humanity in attempting to change habitual ways of acting so that you are not hard on yourself if you "fall off the wagon?''
F. What action plan can you set up to ensure you'll "jump back on the wagon'' after every failure?