SMART Recovery San Diego – SMART Recovery San Diego



SMART Recovery Goals, Tools, & Info: SMART’s fundamental activity4/22/21; Tom Horvath, PhDIn SMART we often talk about using psychological “tools” to improve our lives. Tools are only part of SMART. The other broad categories include 1) goals (e.g., to stop addictive problems, and the goals which support that goal, such as the 4-Point Program and other goals you set for yourself), 2) accurate psychological information (e.g., urges go away, you can desensitize to fears), 3) our community, and 4) our own practice using these ideas.The fundamental activity that ties together all these ideas is reinterpreting our experiences. We reinterpret our experience when we want to reduce negative emotions or self-destructive behaviors. A popular way in SMART to reinterpret experience is the ABC (A = Activating event, B = underlying Belief or interpretation, C = emotional or behavioral Consequence). The ABC is a good summary of the fundamental activity. The ABC, from one school of psychotherapy (REBT), proposes we reinterpret experience by looking for the 3 “musts:” I must be successful, others must treat me well, life must be easy. Indeed, if I believe these musts, I am often going to be disappointed. However, we often fit into the ABC many other approaches to re-interpretation, and in fact there are many of them (as demonstrated by the hundreds of types of psychotherapy). For instance, how might we understand our unwanted experience if we considered: Our childhood learning about authority and nurturance? our values? our long-term goals? the reinforcements we experience? our deeper beliefs? our existential concerns? what we can change vs what we cannot? our current relationship functioning? our family dynamics? etc. These reinterpretation methods invite our attention to more than we first focused on, and suggest new action. We can expand the context in which we interpret our experience. For instance: 1) Yes, I feel mistreated. I have a hard time trusting authorities. They sense it, so they don’t trust me either. I could move forward by trying to increase trust. 2) Yes, this was bad, but if I’m patient, it will probably turn out well. 3) Yes, I made a mistake, but I’ve been successful overall lately, and today I was tired and hungry. I need to practice better self-care.QUESTIONS (pass if you wish):What is your favorite tool for change? Can you understand this tool as providing you a way to reinterpret your experience, perhaps by expanding the context you are considering? How helpful is it to think that when you are caught up in a negative emotion or behavior you need to “step back” and “see a bigger picture?”What is a recent example of your expanding the context of your thinking, and having it help?How helpful is it to think there is one fundamental activity in SMART?What else would you like to talk about? ................
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