Issue 63: Terminology Tuesday: The Stages of Change
But how about I stay in my cocoon a little longer? Butterflies are overrated.
Welcome to Issue 63. This newsletter is about the Stages of Change and why “trying” is already doing—not a tidy progression, but loops of preparation, action, and maintenance in recovery and life shifts. In Terminology Tuesday, I share a dentist chat sparking explanation of the Transtheoretical Model, from precontemplation to relapse as information, and how DBT fits to tip us into effort. The Updates section announces my May 18 Substack LIVE on Awaken Your Sexuality and the Food for Thought section focuses on turning 49 tomorrow.
In This Issue
Recent Issues
Terminology Tuesday: The Stages of Change
Updates: Upcoming Substack Live Appearance May 18
Food for Thought: 49 and Fabulous
Remapping Resources: Caregiver Resources: Catheter Bags; Wearable Technology: Reviews of Fitbits, Apple Watches, and Oura Ring.
Recent Issues
Fact-Check Friday: Is It Time?
This piece looks at "Is It Time?" not as a checklist or crisis, but as the threshold where "not yet" flips to "now" amid caregiving, health shifts, and family dynamics. Writing from a post-layoff context shaped by recovery, neuroplasticity, and elder care, I unpack the emotional tipping points for assisted living decisions as practical discernment rather than dread. In the end, timing shows up here as nervous-system work—remapping responses to uncertainty and choosing action without shame.Terminology Tuesday: Entrepreneurship
This piece looks at entrepreneurship not as hustle or reinvention, but as work done without scaffolding—no built‑in deadlines, feedback, or reassurance. Writing from a post‑layoff context shaped by caregiving, health recovery, and financial constraint, I describe entrepreneurship as a practical response rather than a dream as we experience scarcity, ambiguous results, and the uncomfortable skill of discernment. In the end, entrepreneurship shows up here as nervous‑system work—tolerating uncertainty and continuing anyway.
Terminology Tuesday: The Stages of Change (and Why “Trying” Is Already Doing)
I was at the dentist recently. I love my dentist. I really enjoy him and his team. We’re always chatting about something or other and he calls my teeth “turkeys.” I love it.
At some point that morning, he gently told me I needed to stop doing a certain thing.
Without thinking, I said, “I know. I’m aware of it, and I’m well beyond contemplation and into action.”
He paused, looked at me, and then—very sincerely—said, “What?”
So I explained the Stages of Change. I told him how I wasn’t in denial about the behavior. I wasn’t even just thinking about changing it. I’d moved into planning, and I was actively trying, however imperfectly, to do something different.
I could tell he was impressed and interested. More reasons why I like him.
What Are the Stages of Change?
The Stages of Change, formally known as the Transtheoretical Model, describe how we actually change behaviors over time. Not ideally. Not linearly. Actually. We move from not seeing a problem, to seeing it but hesitating, to preparing, to trying, to sustaining—and sometimes looping back when something doesn’t hold.
They’re most often associated with addiction and health behavior change, but they show up everywhere: Caregiving boundaries, burnout, career shifts, disordered eating recovery, communication patterns, scarcity mindset, money habits, how we talk to ourselves, etc.
The classic stages are:
Precontemplation – “There’s no problem here.”
Contemplation – “I see the problem, but I’m not ready.”
Preparation – “I’m planning to change.”
Action – “I’m actively doing something different.”
Maintenance – “I’m sustaining the change.”
Relapse / Recycling – “Something didn’t stick, and I’m looping back.”
Here’s an important note, too: Relapse is not failure. It’s information. I’m ambivalent about the word being used, but I care very much about how it’s used.
How We Express the Stages of Change
In precontemplation, we say things like “That’s just how I cope” or “Everyone else manages—I just need to try harder.” In contemplation, it’s more like “Something about this isn’t working” or “I know I should change, but…” Preparation sounds like “I’m reading about this” or “I’m planning how to do it right.” Action shows up as “I made the appointment” or “I said no, even though it felt awkward.” And maintenance feels like “This still takes effort, but it’s familiar now.”
Most of us don’t experience change as a clean progression—and what I’ve been writing about for 63 issues of Remapping Myself clearly shows that remapping neural pathways is rarely about that kind of tidy upward arc. We experience it as loops and switchbacks instead. Action doesn’t mean ease. It means effort. It means choosing the less-worn path while the old one is still right there, wide and familiar. And so tempting.
The Stage I Excel At: Preparation
I am exceptional at preparation. I have bought all the things. Read all the articles. Saved the links. Downloaded the templates. Highlighted the passages. Thought through every possible contingency. Told all the people I’m doing it. And then…not done the thing.
Preparation can feel indistinguishable from action. My brain gets the same little dopamine hit—Look at you, being responsible!—without me having to risk actually starting. Research becomes a proxy. Purchasing becomes a stand-in. Planning masquerades as progress.
And to be fair: preparation is a legitimate stage of change. It builds safety. It reduces uncertainty. It matters.
But preparation can also morph into something subtler. Not refusal. Not sabotage. Not “I don’t want to change.” More like micro-avoidance. At a very small, very human level, preparation can protect me from the moment where discomfort lives—where I might fail, do it wrong, or learn that change costs more than I expected. Or because I really, really don’t want to do it. Staying in preparation lets me keep the identity of someone who is trying without yet having to face the vulnerability or discomfort of action.
Preparation becomes a surrogate for doing.
Tipping Into Action
For me, moving from preparation into action rarely looks like a leap. It looks like a tip; the same kind of tip I wrote about in that piece about getting unstuck. Not rewriting everything, just opening the document. Not fixing the entire pattern, just interrupting it once. Not committing to forever, just trying something different today.
That small shift is often enough to begin reinforcing the new path, even if it still feels unnatural. Because most of the time, readiness doesn’t come first. Readiness follows action. Confidence follows repetition. Familiarity follows use.
Where DBT Fits
This is also where Dialectical Behavioral Therapy fits so naturally alongside the Stages of Change. It doesn’t expect immediate transformation. It assumes that change is built through practice, repetition, and repair. Different skills support different stages: Wise Mind helps us even see the problem clearly. Nonjudgment keeps us from turning setbacks into shame. Opposite Action often shows up right in the middle of effort. Distress Tolerance carries us through the part where change feels destabilizing before it feels sustainable. Behavior Chain Analysis strengthens maintenance by explaining breakdowns without blaming ourselves. The list goes on and on.
Circling the Drain
When I was an alcoholic, I knew I was. I was long past precontemplation. I wasn’t confused about whether alcohol was a problem. I wasn’t defending it, and I wasn’t telling myself it was harmless. I knew exactly what was happening, and I knew it was changing me. What I didn’t have yet was enough distance, enough support, or enough willingness to live differently. So I moved in and out of contemplation and preparation for a long time, circling the same knowledge without quite knowing how to act on it. Without wanting to.
That’s part of why the stages matter to me. They remind me that awareness alone doesn’t end the story. We can know something is breaking us and still not be ready to change it. We can see the wreckage clearly and still stay attached to the coping strategy that created it. For me, alcohol was never just a habit; it was a way of softening, avoiding, numbing, surviving. That made it harder to give up, because I wasn’t only walking away from a substance. I was walking away from a whole system of coping.
That’s where the stages become less like a checklist and more like a map. They help explain why change can take so long even when we already know the truth. They make room for the fact that knowing, wanting, trying, and sustaining are not the same thing. And they leave space for the hard, unglamorous middle—where we know we need to change, and we are changing, but not cleanly, not consistently, and not without loss.
Is Everything a Big Deal?
Not every change needs to be treated like a major life overhaul. Some things are small enough that we can just notice them, adjust, and move on. That’s not me saying they don’t matter; it’s me saying not every shift needs to be turned into a five-act drama. (GET IT? STAGES!)
At the same time, small changes often sit inside bigger patterns. Doing something once may look minor on the surface, but if it interrupts a long-standing habit, it can be part of a much larger remapping process. The same is true for brushing off an old thought pattern, taking one pause before reacting, or choosing a different response to stress. Even when the moment is small, the pathway it touches may not be.
So the better question may not be, “Is this a big deal?” It may be, “Is this changing a pattern?” If it is, then it belongs in the conversation. If it’s just a one-off adjustment, maybe it’s simply a practical choice. Both matter. They just don’t always belong to the same category.
Is There an Opposite Stages of Change?
I’ve wondered before if there’s an Opposite Stages of Change—some kind of reverse process where we undo progress entirely. Everything slows to a stop or unravels. But the more I sit with that, the less it holds. Even when we slip, we’re still engaging. Even when we stop, there’s still awareness somewhere in the system. Even “I can’t do this right now” reflects a relationship to change.
Which makes me think the opposite of change isn’t failure.
It’s not noticing.
And if we’re reading this—recognizing our own patterns, our own loops, our own attempts—we’re already doing something important: We’re noticing.
Exercise: Find Your Stage
Here’s a quick way to figure out where we are in the stages. Grab a piece of paper or open a note on your phone. Pick one behavior you’ve been wanting to change—something specific, not vague. Then ask yourself these five questions, one at a time, and jot down your honest first thought:
Do I see this as a problem, or am I still explaining it away?
Am I mostly thinking about changing it, or have I made specific plans?
Have I tried anything different in the last week—even something small or awkward?
Does it still feel like real effort, or is it starting to feel more automatic?
When I slip back, do I beat myself up, or do I just note what happened and keep going?
Your answers will usually point to your stage without forcing a label. If you’re explaining it away, you’re likely in precontemplation. Ambivalence means contemplation. Concrete plans signal preparation. Any actual trying—even inconsistent—puts you in action. If it’s effortful but sticking more often, you’re building maintenance. Slipping doesn’t reset you—it just shows where the path needs more reinforcement. It might not actually matter so much which stage your in…as long as you see you’re changing.
Updates
Mark your calendars for May 18—I’ll be a guest on Jenny Skoog Mondesir’s Substack LIVE, chatting about Awaken Your Sexuality: A Guide to Connection and Intimacy after Addiction and Trauma in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month. Jenny’s book club features live discussions with authors, writers, commentators, and—in my case—editors, on transformative reads like Awaken Your Sexuality, which blend personal narrative and life-changing insights. More details soon.
Food for Thought
49 and Fabulous
Tomorrow, April 29, I turn 49. And yet I feel so young—like age is just a suggestion, not a sentence.
Is it because Gen X had to grow up fast? Because, among other things, we were the latchkey kids—the responsible ones labeled slackers despite being ridiculously capable and adaptive? I don’t know; there’s nothing new about feeling “old” when we’ve been holding it down forever. So maybe I feel young because I’ve always felt 49.
Or is it because I never had kids, so I never had to relinquish kid-dom? Being an aunt meant doing some caretaking, but being the fun one. It’s pretty much being a professional kid. And the one who got to go home to her dog. There’s something poignant about not passing along the mantle of being the kid—staying forever the playful one.
Food for thought, indeed.
Remapping Resources
Tools, products, and supports I’ve actually used while navigating recovery, caregiving, burnout, and rebuilding after disruption. What reduced friction, what didn’t, and what I’d choose again—or skip—if faced with the same decision now?
For your consideration:
Caregiver Resource: Catheter Bags - When needs must, we need fast and cheap solutions
Wearable Technology: Fitbits, Apple Watches, and Oura Ring - When our data feedback requirements change with our lives...and our nervous systems
