BABY STEPS

When some of my patients told me that they were taking baby steps to try to change unhelpful patterns of their behavior. They were making small changes and hoping to gradually makes changes.  They all  told me that it was not working.  I thought that there was something not right about baby steps = small steps.  I then saw a toddler of one of my patients stand up and take some steps.  The toddler was delighted.  It looked like baby steps are actually big steps in that everything changes when you [a baby] have been crawling and then start walking.  So, baby steps really means making big changes in what we do and making it clear to ourselves that we really want to make a significant change in our behaviors/coping.  If we only take small steps, our brains do not recognize this as a committment for a change and so maintains the old pattern of behaviors.  To change patterns of our behaviors we must  make it clear that we want a change and baby steps are the way to go!