In clinical psychology the technique is called motivational interviewing, and the purpose is to help the person feel ready to make the change they need to by helping them plan out what they will need to change in their environment to make it happen. The trick is to avoid pressuring them in the exact moment and instead help them start imagining a more positive future as a very first baby step. You can do this by yourself right now if you want to, even if you know you’re not ready to do what you need to.
So, what do you need to happen in your life to be able to do that thing you know you need to do?
Bonus tip:
A distinction that I often find useful is that “simple” is not the same sad “easy”. Biggest example of this for me was when I needed to go no contact with a family member; despite knowing that it was what I needed to do, it took me a while to muster the strength to do what was necessary — it was simple, but not easy.
Another manifestation of “why didn’t I do this sooner” is when a solution is easy to implement, but it took a while to figure out what to do — this applies in complex situations, or ones where I have made past attempts that have failed, and I need to work smarter, not harder.
Both of these problem shapes benefit from the motivational interviewing technique described above. I think whenever we’re thinking about ways to improve ourselves, it can be easy to slip into a pattern of being unkind to yourself. Some things take time and that’s okay, because it needs to be — you can’t bullying yourself into change.
Honestly I was just reflecting on the lack of self-forgiveness being a lot of what’s wrong with sobriety culture. I quit booze cold turkey 6 months ago (it was easy when I stopped talking to my fundie parents) but I’ve had people try to get me to personally identify with the label of “alcoholic.” It’s actually really important to some people that I do so, even internet strangers! They will literally argue for entire ten or more comment long threads that I need to call myself an alcoholic.
I honestly just don’t find dwelling on it to be a useful sobriety strategy. I’ve gotten significantly more mileage out of just thinking about why I feel the need to drink sometimes and how I can arrange my life to lessen that. For instance in addition to cutting off my shitty family it also helped for the first couple months to temporarily not help my fiance with walking the dog because walking the dog to the corner store had become part of that ritual. It’s not an issue now, but just not doing it for a little while was a big help. But to believe some of these people I should have needed to self-flagellate a lot more to have accomplished what I did.
I agree, the rhetoric feels pretty iffy.
The framing of “you are an alcoholic, and that’s what you will always be, even long after you no longer have a drinking problem” always sat poorly with me. I generally have a super addictive personality, so whilst I’ve never had substance use issues that have required me quitting something entirely, but I do have to always be mindful because moderation just isn’t something that comes naturally to me. I’ve seen a lot of people like me who have issues with alcohol or other drugs who cycle round onto a new substance to abuse, and I think that the hard binary that sobriety culture presents exacerbates that.
Congrats on your progress. What you describe about the little disruptions (like not walking the dog) really resonates with me. Sometimes giving the arrangement of one’s life a little jiggle can be invaluable for solving inertia