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Keep a log of your lapse experiences. Find patterns in your behavior so that you can modify your environment and plan ahead for the next time you are faced with a similar situation:

• What were you feeling?
• Where were you?
• With whom were you keeping company?
• What was the time of day?

It also might be helpful to jot down a behavior chain in a journal. This involves nothing more than writing down the series of events, situations, feelings, emotions, or experiences that led to the unwanted behavior. Your behavior chain might look something like this:

• I was having a decent day at work.
• My supervisor asked whether she could speak with me in her office.
• She proceeded to tell me that our department would have to make some changes and that my colleague and good friend would be leaving.
• It would be my responsibility to perform his job duties until we could find a more suitable arrangement.
• I was overwhelmed and angry.
• I drove home in a “stew.”
• When I got inside, I went directly to the kitchen to decide what to have for dinner.
• Nothing looked good.
• A package of cookies was on the counter, so I ate a few of those while I pondered what to fix.
• Still couldn’t find anything that looked good, so I had some chips, too.
• Settled on a frozen pizza but was really hungry, so I took the bag of chips into the living room and turned on the TV while I waited for the pizza to bake.
• When it was done, I was already engrossed in the TV program, so I took the pizza into the living room, too.
• By the end of the show, I had eaten six slices of pizza and felt sick to my stomach; I was too tired to go for a walk.
• I cleaned up and berated myself for being such a glutton; then resolved to “do better” the next day.

Sound familiar? I’m sure you could share countless similar stories. Why go through the agony of writing it down? Because seeing it on paper demystifies the unwanted behavior. It’s easy to understand why you ate six slices of pizza when you take the day’s events into consideration. If you can get a handle on the purpose your behavior was serving, you can identify alternatives that meet the real need. Seek the help of a counselor, minister, or therapist if you need help identifying or determining how best to meet these needs.

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