Stage Two

Stage 2

“We are not helpless dolls…we do not behave as we behave by accident.”

— Ernst G. Beier

Awareness—When You Know You Have a Problem

People in this stage know they have a problem and want to understand their problem, but they don’t know what to do or they feel powerless to change. People in stage 2 are still far from making a commitment to change.

Many people get stuck in this stage. They spend years telling themselves that they are going to change “one day.”

Fear of failure keeps many people stuck in this stage. They hide from the truth by telling themselves that they’re waiting for the “perfect” weight-loss program, the perfect smoking-cessation program, or the perfect time to stop drinking.  

“I’ll change when the time is right,” is one of the phrases you hear most often from people in this stage of the self-change cycle. There will never be a “right time,” of course, but they haven’t been able to break out of their verbal cage.

Some people in this stage are never able to make a serious commitment to change, even though their life depends on it. We are all familiar with the day-to-day experiences and struggles of ordinary people who are stuck in this stage.

My father-in-law recently died after a long struggle with emphysema. Even though he slept with an oxygen tank next to his bed, he never quit smoking. He cut down, but he never quit, even though he knew it was killing him.

A number of years ago, I read about a woman in New Jersey who had a tracheotomy before she died of cancer. After her tracheotomy, she was no longer able to breathe through her mouth, so she placed lighted cigarettes into the hole in her throat and inhaled the smoke that way.

Danger signs

People in stage 2 are still focusing on the problem. They want to talk about themselves and their families; they can be quite open when talking about their problem. What holds people back in this stage is often a fear of change.

Even good change threatens our security. When we’re accustomed to something, the thought of losing it can cause us to panic and freeze where we are, no matter how much we stand to gain by changing.  

Olga is a widow with three children in their teens and early twenties. She met a man named Chuck and fell head over heels in love. Chuck is divorced and recently moved to Olga’s city from another part of the country. He is a construction worker in his late forties who seems to have no trouble finding jobs in spite of a drinking problem.

A few months after I met them, Olga and Chuck left town. When Olga’s children realized that their mother was going out with an alcoholic drifter, they naturally became alarmed and pleaded with their mother to break off the relationship.

When Olga refused to stop seeing Chuck, her children told relatives that they feared their mother was in a dangerous relationship. When the whole family confronted Olga, she did what any experienced counselor could have easily predicted: She left town with her car, her clothes, and her new boyfriend.   

I was taking my walk around the neighborhood one evening when Olga stopped her car and asked if she could talk to me. What followed was a sad but common story of a woman in love with the wrong man.

When Olga and Chuck got back in town, Olga used her contacts to get Chuck a good job. Chuck moved into an apartment that Olga owns. The apartment is adjacent to the house where Olga lives with her children. Olga told me that Chuck pays rent, and he is nice to the children.

But Chuck has become verbally abusive to Olga. He hasn’t abused her physically, but the verbal abuse has become intolerable. Olga is a Hispanic American. She was born in the United States. When Chuck is drinking, he shouts at Olga and tells her to go back to Mexico. Every time Chuck insults her, Olga asks him why he doesn’t go back to wherever he is from.

Olga is a classic example of a person in stage 2. She has become aware of the problem. Olga’s “bad habit” is her low self-esteem, which is the only thing that keeps her from ending such an abusive relationship. Just as every bad habit can be broken, low self-esteem can be changed into a healthy self-image. But it takes time.

Olga realizes that her children’s safety may be at risk. Chuck has never done anything violent so far, but Olga is beginning to understand that she’s playing with fire. As bad as the relationship is, Olga doesn’t want to lose Chuck. “I love him,” she says, “Can’t he see how much he’s hurting me?”

Olga recognizes that her life may be in danger. Chuck has said that he would like to take her to another part of the country. Olga senses that moving to an area of the country where she doesn’t have any support relationships would make her even more vulnerable than she is now. “He might take me there and then decide to kill me,” she said.

Chuck hasn’t threatened Olga or the children, and Olga doesn’t want to ask Chuck to leave. She still can’t take action, which is a common problem for people in stage 2. Instead of telling Chuck to leave, she asks him why he doesn’t leave on his own. That’s as far as she can go at this point.  

Getting unstuck

Olga is afraid to lose the life she has become used to, no matter how unsatisfying or risky it is. She worries about her problem day and night, but so far that is all she has done.

One of the biggest dangers in this stage is to substitute worrying about a problem for working on it. That describes Olga. If you’re in a position to help someone who’s in stage 2 of the cycle, always keep the following points in mind:

·       People in this stage need support, listening, and feedback.

·       Don’t give advice unless you’re asked for it.

·       People in this stage usually need to be jolted into action, but that doesn’t mean you’re the one who should apply the pressure.

Trying to push a person to take action before she is ready to change can be a big mistake. Pressure at this point will only make the person more resistant to change. People who are stuck in stage 2 really do know better, but they have forgotten what they know. Too often, a personal tragedy must happen before a person in this stage is able to move forward.

Olga knows what she must do. Yet she still can’t do it, even though her family’s welfare depends on her ability to act. This is typical of people in stage 2 of the cycle. Olga didn’t come to me for advice. She already knows all the reasons to end the relationship that she needs to know, and she is beginning to understand that as long as she does nothing, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Olga is like a chain smoker who isn’t ready to quit. Many smokers are fully aware of the damage they’re doing to their health. John repeatedly says that he wants to quit, but can’t. The truth is that John doesn’t want to quit smoking.

John knows the health risks that smokers face. But he doesn’t want to give up all the little satisfactions that smoking gives him: the pleasant anticipation he experiences after a meal when he is about to light a cigarette; the satisfaction of feeling the cigarette between his fingers; the nicotine rush that goes straight to his brain every time he takes a puff; the security of knowing he has an extra carton of his favorite brand stashed away in the closet.

The only part of smoking that John wants to give up is the part that threatens to give him lung cancer; he wishes he could somehow eliminate that part, and hang onto all the other little perks that hooked him in the first place. People like John don’t want to quit, no matter how much they say they do.

John isn’t lying when he says he wants to quit. He sincerely thinks he wants to quit. His problem is that he hasn’t come to grips with the real reason he smokes. As soon as he is able to do so, he will be in a position to move forward. When he is able to admit that he likes lots of little things about his habit, he will be in a position to substitute healthy new habits for the old destructive ones.   

As long as he hides from the truth—from the real reasons why he smokes—he can conveniently shift responsibility from himself to a “force” that’s stronger than he is. When a smoker says, “I really want to quit, but I just can’t,” what he really means is that he doesn’t want to be held accountable for his bad choices.

For many people, there is a certain comfort in believing that they can’t avoid the destructive path they’re following, even though they know where it leads in the end. They are locked into a self-defeating mindset that says, “I know I’m doomed, but what can I do about it?” The answer is that they can do a great deal about it, but not until they are able to see through the mind games they play.

Why do we play these games, even when we know our habits are destroying us? I think the answer goes something like this: As soon as we break out of the cage we’ve been hiding in, we will have to admit that we had the power to do it all along.

That can be a scary thing. A person who frees himself from a habit that has dominated his life for years or decades can be terrified of the prospect of having to admit that he wasted a large part of his life by failing to take responsibility for his own behavior.

If you’re in a helping relationship with a person like that, or if you are courageous enough to admit that you are that person, take heart and remember this: Better to have wasted part of your life than to have wasted all of it. It’s never too late to turn your life around. As soon as you do, you’ll discover that none of it was wasted after all—it just took a little longer to reach your goal.  

A woman you know may be drinking herself to death, but subconsciously she tells herself that it would be far worse to be free of her habit. If she were free, she would have to spend the rest of her life wondering what she might have made of her life if she had realized sooner that she was free to make better choices.

This is the danger of focusing on the past. When all you can see is what lies behind, you aren’t able to understand that new opportunities present themselves as soon as you make the decision to walk in a different direction.

A person’s capacity to shift her thoughts from the past to the present is the key to moving from stage 2 to stage 3. You can’t make the decision to change as long as you’re still focused on the past.     

As soon as you decide to change, you’re at the end of stage 2. The next step in the cycle of freeing yourself from a bad habit is the preparation stage.