2: The Change Equation

The Change Equation, or the Motivational Enhancement, Choice Awareness, and Use Prevention Therapy (Somov & Somova, 2003), is a proposed algorithm of change intended as a theoretical platform for the treatment of the compulsive/addictive spectrum of psychological presentations.  The mandate of applied psychology is that of facilitating change, from one state to another. 

The Change Equation proposes the following “equation” of change: 

Change = Freedom to Change + Reason to Change + Method to Change

The Change Equation model begins with the thesis that a sense of freedom to change is primary:  one has to recognize oneself as being free (i.e. capable) in order to endeavor a change.   While reason to change (motivation for change) is important, it is at best predictive of an attempt at change.   Method to change (which involves the mastery of change-specific skills such as craving control or emotional self-regulation) serves to predict the successful maintenance of change once it has been endeavored, but only if the person remains aware of the choice to utilize the skills whenever necessary.

Barriers to Agency: Automaticity and Schemas

The Change Equation model recognizes that a sense of being free to change (agency), while an ontologically inalienable constant, is a perceptual variable.   And indeed, while, in theory, at any given moment, we have at least two or more options (or degrees of freedom) to choose from, we often feel that we have no choice.  In other words, while the fact of our actual freedom is a constant, our perceptual freedom is a variable that is limited by cognitive-behavioral automaticity and freedom-restricting belief schemas.  Cognitive-behavioral automaticity is thinking (interpretive) and acting habits, i.e. schematic reactivity that is devoid of conscious awareness of response choices available at a given moment.  Such automaticity results in mindlessness that “narrows our choices” (Langer, 1989, p. 55).  Freedom-restricting belief structures (such as a premature cognitive commitment to the Disease Model of addiction) are maladaptive conceptualizations of the problem that restrict one’s perceived capacity for change.

Total Freedom-to-Change: Strategic and Tactical Choice Awareness

Clients’ sense of freedom-to-change is facilitated through Choice Awareness Training that involves cultivation of both strategic and tactical choice awareness.  Cultivation of clients’ strategic sense of being free is accomplished through a systematic challenging of clients’ freedom-restricting belief schemas, and is designed to leverage an ontological shift to a baseline (strategic) realization that one always has a choice in any matter, that one cannot not choose, and that, as a result, one is fundamentally free, free to choose, and, thus, to change.  Successfully instilled sense of freedom (to choose and, therefore, to change) has no “half-life” and offers an open-ended interpretive relapse prevention buffer against failed efforts at change. 

Knowing that one is fundamentally free is only theory, however empowering it might be.  In practice, an operational, tactical of being free manifests through choice awareness, i.e. through the awareness of the options that are immediately given to us.  If I am aware of no options, then, phenomenologically, I have no choice, and, therefore, I am not free since there is nothing to choose from.  Thus, a here-and-now awareness of options is a prerequisite for an act of choice and for a corresponding sense of being free.  This tactical sense of freedom is a function of the number of consciously perceived options at any given time out of all the potential options available to an individual in any given moment.  Consequently, tactical (actionable, realizable, pragmatic) freedom is directly proportionate to the degree of choice awareness:  the greater the awareness of the choice options available at any given moment, the greater is the degree of freedom.  

In summary, from the standpoint of the Change Equation model of change, in order for change to occur (assuming the reason to change and the method to change), one must: a) become strategically aware of one’s fundamental freedom to choose, and, thus, to change; b) re-conceptualize the perceived loss of control as being a function of habit-associated automaticity, and c) develop a habit of being tactically aware of the options available in any given moment, particularly at the times of making change-relevant decisions which is facilitated through an increased baseline of choice awareness with the help of daily choice awareness practice.  On a technical level, Choice Awareness Training consists of a combination of Logotherapy (to promote ontological, strategic, existential sense of always having a choice and, thus, being fundamentally free) and modified Mindfulness Training (to promote tactical, here-and-now awareness of immediately given choice options).  Choice Awareness Training was piloted in the context of a correctional residential drug and alcohol treatment program in an American jail, as part of an overall clinical curriculum predicated on the Change Equation model (Somov & Somova, 2003).