The transteric model of change arises to understand how people change in the face of certain addictive behavior, developed by psychologists James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente in 1982.
These researchers have tried to understand how and why people change, either alone or with the help of a therapist, and described a number of steps a person goes through when they want to quit a habit, such as using drugs or highly processed foods.
- These steps apply to the change that the person proposes and operates on its own.
- But also to the change assisted by a therapist.
- That is.
- Either inside or outside therapy.
- People seem to go through similar phases.
- Using similar processes.
In this approach, motivation is understood as a person’s current state or the stage of preparation for change. This is important because we often use the word?Incorrectamente. La motivation is critical to any process of personal change.
The wheel of change? Emerging from the Prochaska-DiClemente transteric change model supports the existence of four, five or six steps, in the form of a wheel (circular). Thus, people who intend to remove the addictive pipes go through the different stages of the wheel, as if crossing them.
The fact that the wheel is a circle reflects a reality: in any process of change, the person revolves around the process several times before achieving a stable change. In their first research with smokers, for example, Prochaska and DiClemente found that smokers circled the wheel three to seven times (on average four times) before quitting smoking as they wished.
This wheel also considers relapse as a normal event or other state of change. Sometimes psychologists tell their patients, “every unique consumption or relapse brings you closer to a healing step. “
This certainly does not mean that people are encouraged to relapse in any way; However, this is a realistic perspective to prevent them from crumbing, demoralizing or surrendering in the event of a relapse.
The entry point of the change process is the “pre-contemplate” stage. The person has not yet considered that they have a problem or that they need to change their life. Pre-contemplator? Someone who knows he has a problem, even if he’s not aware of it.
Once the person is aware of the problem, he enters a period characterized by ambivalence: the phase of “contemplation”. The contemplative person considers and, at the same time, rejects the change. The contemplative person’s experience is described as a kind of oscillation. between the reasons for the change and the reasons for continuing in the same way.
A person who has problems with alcohol and is at this stage, for example, can say something like, “I don’t think I have a problem with alcohol. I can drink a lot to be healthy, but I don’t think I drink. “Can I stop drinking whenever I want?. As we see, this is a step in which the person, despite a problem, has the feeling of controlling.
The determination stage, in the transteoric model of change, is like an opportunity window that opens the door to a new period of time, if during this time the person enters the action stage, the process of change continues. the person returns to the contemplation stage.
The “Action” stage is the one that people most often consider to be the starting stage of therapy. Here, the person engages in actions that will lead to change.
Most people who quit smoking, for example, do so on their own. The goal during this step is to evolve the problem you want to solve. However, the intent to change does not guarantee that the change will continue over time.
The challenge here is to keep the change achieved in the previous stage and avoid relapse. Abandoning drugs, reducing alcohol use or losing weight is a first step in change, followed by the challenge of maintaining withdrawal or moderation.
Finally, if relapse occurs, the person’s task is to start spinning around the wheel again, not to stand still at this point. A trip or relapse is normal and expected when a person is trying to change a long-standing behavior.
As we have already seen, the transtheric model of change involves a series of steps arranged circularly. A person who wants to change addictive behavior goes through these steps indefinitely, until he finally manages to keep the change.
William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick, motivational interview, Ed. Paids, Barcelona, 1999.