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Written by Jeffrey Chernin, Ph.D., LMFT

Click here to contact Jeffrey and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

When you’re in a vicious cycle, you do something which causes you to feel bad. Feeling bad can lead to poor self-care, which can lead to wanting to get away from the bad feelings that result, which can cause you to do things that make you feel worse, and so on. This cycle lead to an ongoing chain of unhealthy choices and behaviors.

How do you overcome this type of ingrained pattern? The Adaptive Spiral, an idea which developed organically through my practice, is a new way for you to think about growth, especially in regard to overcoming a vicious cycle.

The chain starts when certain “coping strategies” (actions and perceptions) that got you through the minefields of childhood are left unchecked. These strategies go from being adaptive in childhood to maladaptive as an adult, often locking you into unsatisfying relationships and frustrating patterns. Let’s turn to elements of the spiral and see how each one can help you to overcome old patterns.

Elements of the Adaptive Spiral

Growth along the spiral includes visiting the same places but at deeper levels of awareness, new types of understanding, and different perspectives. Since growth doesn’t exist in a straight line, it also includes steps forward as well as back.

The seven elements of the adaptive spiral are:

The first element of the spiral is Expanding your Awareness. Awareness has three levels. The first level is to know that you have a long-standing pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving. The next level is to acknowledge that you play a part in the pattern and become willing to change. The third level of awareness is to recognize that these patterns serve a purpose, which often resides in the unconscious. As you become more aware of this “secondary gain,” you are more aware of what you’re really wanting from others (and out of life) and that you can choose instead of simply reacting to life’s challenges.

The second element of the adaptive spiral is Accepting Responsibility. To accept responsibility, you must be willing to take a look at yourself as non-defensively as possible. Accepting responsibility also means examining your motivations and choices as objectively as possible. Subsequent personal growth stems from taking risks out of your comfort zone, which you alone are responsible for.

The third element is Challenging your Perception, which includes how you view yourself in relation to others and looking at the beliefs about yourself and others which you developed early on in childhood, along with the coping strategies you developed to make it through the minefields of childhood. Your belief system includes thoughts, both automatic and well-considered, as well as the subsequent feelings, moods, and attitude. Think about where these beliefs came from. Also think about the coping strategies you developed – isolating, distracting yourself from your problems, and so on. Learn not to hate these coping strategies and instead realize how they function in your life. Positive change includes what I call “tool replacement.”

The fourth element, Recognizing Strengths, includes having courage to accept your imperfections, look at yourself honestly, and be willing to change. Perseverance, which is a type of strength, means you know that change takes time. Remember what it has taken you to get through rough times as a way to help you recognize the strengths you already possess.

The fifth component is Identifying with Others. This element refers to realizing you are not alone in that everyone has these patterns. Having vicious cycles makes you human, and you can gain a sense of connection with others as you realize this. This is especially important because Isolation is a factor in many vicious cycles, and feeling connected to others is a buffer against them.

Learning to Trust is the sixth element. It means being able to trust yourself, others, and your feelings. The outlook that led to your vicious cycle has a type of “logic” that stems from childhood experiences (later confirmed as an adult). If this logic includes a lack of faith in yourself or trust in others, it’s time to learn which beliefs are amenable to change.

The final element of the spiral – Taking Action – is the final step in tool replacement and it must be done again and again for it to become effective. It took you years for your cycles to become cemented, so it may take much time and effort to change them. Long-lasting change tends to occur in small increments.

Besides, a gung-ho approach is usually self-defeating because it can become part of any ongoing vicious cycle. For example, let’s take dieting. You do well for a while, and then you have a “slip,” which leads to feeling bad about yourself. Which coping strategy do many people use to cope with these highly uncomfortable feelings? They eat! The “diet” fails and the weight comes back on. Now apply this example to substance abuse or any other life challenge. You’ll see the parallel.

That’s why it’s important to look at dieting and any change as a process involving small, incremental changes. Instead of continuing a series of defeats and cravings and craziness, which small change are you willing to consider… today? Are you willing to walk twice a week for 10 minutes apiece? Occasionally share a meal or dessert with a friend or your partner when you go out to eat?

I know that changing is very difficult. In fact, we all know what we “should” be doing for ourselves. The bridge from knowing to doing is the hardest to cross, but once the other elements fall into place, your way along the spiral becomes easier to manage.

You may need the assistance to make the changes you desire. These include self-help groups, books, a psychotherapist, and good, honest friends. Regardless of the resources you utilize in your self-examination, remember it can be a scary, but potentially enriching experience to overcome self-defeating behavior as you find new ways of living.

©Copyright 2007 Jeffrey Chernin, Ph.D., LMFT
All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Jeffrey and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Self Care & Healthy Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.