Addiction Counselor Training and Continuing Education are available at AllCEUs.com
hey there everybody and welcome back to the addiction and mental health Disorders Treatment manual I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes this is unit 1 part 24 enhancing self-efficacy
we talked in the last section about what self-efficacy is and I asked you to think about
how confident how much efficacy you had about the changes that you want to make
in order to increase self-efficacy there are certain things that you can do one of them is
what we call rehearsal and Mastery experiences if there are skills and tools that you either need
to learn you don't know it all yet and you need to learn them or if you have them but you're not
really good at them like assertive communication think about those and then you can practice them
you can rehearse them until you feel comfortable you can rehearse them in the mirror you can
rehearse them in your mind using guided imagery or you can rehearse them with another person
but rehearsal helps it become more second nature just like basketball players practice every single
day they're not playing games every single day but they practice every single day they're rehearsing
in order to master their skill so then when they do get into a tournament or a competition they're
able to succeed so they're increasing their self-efficacy through practice and rehearsal
in order to be the best that they can be skills that a lot of people need to rehearse especially
in early recovery refusal skills and this can be addiction refusal skills like not drinking not
smoking those sorts of things but it can also be refusal skills for um in in environments if
somebody tells you how you should feel or wants you to go do something and starts pressuring you
to go do it like go out to the movies when you really need to make sure that you get a good
night's sleep practicing those refusal skills assertive communication is also important and
all of these are kind of involved with each other assertive communication is communicating
your needs and your wants and that they're important and the other person's needs and wants
are important so I hear you really want me to go to the movies with you tonight however I have got
a huge day tomorrow and it's really important for me to get sleep so acknowledging the other
person's needs and wants not saying that they're not important but saying this is what you need so
you're setting you're letting them know that your needs and wants are just as important as theirs
boundary setting goes along with assertive communication our boundaries are Encompass our
space our thoughts our feelings our personal space our stuff I have videos on all of these things on
the YouTube channel but basically rehearsing setting boundaries a lot of times in recovery
people have had their boundaries stomped all over and others have told them how they should feel
what they should think how they should act or even invaded their physical boundaries and made
them feel uncomfortable so learning how to set those boundaries and say all right I hear that
you disagree with my point of view however it's my point of view and I have the right to hold on
to my point of view even if you don't like it and distress tolerance skills is another thing that
can be really helpful to rehearse when you start feeling an urge a craving or an unpleasant emotion
learning that you can tolerate that feeling tolerate that distress without having to act
on it and I use the mnemonic tags using empowering thoughts activities that help you distract until
that feeling goes away or tamps down a little bit using guided imagery to help see yourself
effectively dealing with or tolerating the problem or Sensations sometimes you know either a noxious
smell or a really pleasant smell or loud sound or something else can help you kind of
jar you out of that place where you're worrying or you're angry or something something else it
turns your attention away from it for a minute distress tolerance is not about
avoiding it it's about allowing yourself to tolerate the distress until you can get into
your wise mind where you can think more clearly about what's the best way to solve this problem
guided imagery experiences can be really helpful
and I mentioned that just a minute ago but you can use guided imagery to help
see yourself Envision yourself refusing a an offer of alcohol or doing something
that's really scary if you've got anxiety you can Envision yourself approaching that task
guided imagery is used by a lot of athletes in order to help them practice when they're not
actually practicing but they found that seeing yourself do it in your mind's eye actually does
help with reprogramming or programming that nervous system golfers divers you know lots
of athletes Envision themselves doing it in order to help create that neural pathway role modeling
is another intervention that can increase your self-efficacy looking at other people who have
accomplished the goal that you're working towards and going okay if they can do it I can do it
getting social support a cheerleader can be really helpful if it is a significant other a sponsor
whoever it is find people who are able to sort of whisper in your ear if you will you got this
somebody who can be there even when on the days that you're feeling really frustrated or really
defeated they're there to help you kind of pick up the pieces and say all right here we are let's
figure out what we need to do in order to get back on the horse and start moving forward again
and biofeedback can also be helpful when you're in your stressed out State when you're in that
fight flight freeze sort of State you're not thinking clearly so practicing with biofeedback
can help you get into your wise mind it can help you learn how to trigger that vagus nerve
through either deep breathing or um any other activity that you find helps you get grounded
get centered so you can get into your wise mind and figure out how to address the problem
okay so spend about 50 minutes your activity for today
and think about or discuss strategies for an interventions for each of the following things
to help you cope with them what is it that you can use what skills tools ideas can help you cope with
cravings and urges Cravings they're pretty obvious you know to eat to use those sorts of things urges
may be things if you're struggling with depression you may have the urge to go back to bed and just
pull the covers up over your head anxiety what strategies can be helpful to cope with anxiety
anger depression pain keep asking yourself that question what strategies might be hopeful
and then any of those strategies you don't feel a hundred percent confident in
how can you rehearse them how can you practice using them before you're kind of on the spot in
order to strengthen those tools so they're they're primed and ready when you need them