At some point in our lives, we've all tried to make a change.

Maybe it was a new diet or exercise routine, or maybe we set a goal to stop yelling at our kids or be kinder to our spouse.

With some of these changes, we've been successful, but often our attempts to change our behavior don't work in the long run.

We go back to eating impulsively or yelling at our kids.

Why is that? In this segment,

we're going to explore how we can improve our chances of creating lasting change.

I'm going to show a very short clip from Saturday Night Live. It's supposed to be a funny

example of how not to do therapy. This is English. Stop it. So I should just stop it. There you go. Just stopping it often doesn't work,

and it has negative side effects. If just stop it worked for every problem, then you wouldn't be

taking this course and no one would ever come to therapy. If we could just willpower our way

to change, then none of us would feel stuck or need help to grow.

So I want you to consider what is a problem that you've been having that just keeps coming back?

A problem that you've made multiple attempts to change, but so far nothing has worked.

What have you tried? Take a minute and write down, you know, what this problem was.

Almost everyone who comes to me for therapy has already tried, just stop it, and it's not working.

Nothing they're trying is working. So one of the ways of looking at that is thinking,

oh, you know, they just haven't tried the right behavior yet, you know? Try a different diet,

try a different way of forcing your kids to do stuff.

But what if the solution is the problem?

What if focusing on behavior change is at best a waste of energy,

and at worst, it's making things worse.

When working with addicts in residential treatment,

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