Rewards, on the other hand, include material rewards that clients may promise themselves once a habit is successfully under control for a certain length of time. Most therapists encourage you eventually to substitute inner satisfactions: pride in your slim appearance or improved health, strengthened self-confidence, growth of sexual satisfaction, and, most importantly, a developing sense of self-respect as you learn to gain control over anxiety, frustration, or dissatisfaction.
Behavior therapists also use distraction techniques. They encourage you to do things that are incompatible with the problem you wish to resolve. Bicycling or lovemaking may prove to be good antidotes for some individuals who overeat. Hiking or jogging, or physical reassurance, massage, or relaxing baths may lessen anxiety. Laughter releases tensions and offers its own special kind of encouragement and healthier perspective.
Behavior modification requires strong initiative and discipline on the part of the client. More than these, it requires that you be willing to let go of old habits that have been unsatisfying or destructive and work to form new, more rewarding habits. In the beginning, forcing yourself to behave in new ways may feel like pretense or dishonesty. This is a common experience and should not be allowed to block your desire to change. Unfamiliar and even uncomfortable ways of behaving do become familiar and more comfortable the more they are practiced. If these new ways of behaving come to offer satisfactions or compensations that old habits did not, they will gradually be absorbed into your own sense of personal identity. What at first may feel to you like an act slowly is made a part of your personality until a habit is established that feels entirely natural. This takes time, patience, practice, and more practice.
COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO BEHAVIOR CHANGE
Behavioral psychotherapists use a variety of techniques designed to help clients control their own behavior and individual physical responses more effectively.
Biofeedback
Biofeedback can help many people gain control over habitual, automatic processes. Biofeedback equipment can be used to teach you how to reduce tension, develop skills to bring about relaxation, or cope more successfully with chronic pain. (For a detailed discussion of biofeedback, see Chapter 15.)
Thought Stopping
Thought stopping can help you break chains of negative and self-undermining thoughts. Thought stopping is a technique that begins by having you think out loud during therapy sessions. If you repeatedly express negative, troubling thoughts, the therapist shouts, "Stop!" In this way, you are made acutely aware of self-destructive thinking habits. You gradually learn to stop yourself from trapping yourself in upsetting thoughts by silently commanding your mind to "stop!" It is a simple but often effective technique, related to two techniques we have already discussed: the push-button technique of Adlerian psychotherapy (see Chapter 11) and the technique of disputing your own irrational beliefs in rational-emotive therapy (see Chapter 10).