Of course. All therapy and counseling involve beliefs. This includes the client’s beliefs, the therapist’s beliefs, and the underlying theoretical beliefs of the therapeutic approach itself.

While therapists strive for objectivity, personal and professional beliefs inevitably shape the therapeutic process. Bias creeps in.

Harm reduction starts with belief changes. Belief Eye Movement Therapy focuses on beliefs. Yours and theirs.

Does it make good sense to have a belief change skill in your toolkit?
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Belief change is deeply intertwined with harm reduction in the context of substance use disorder (SUD) recovery. Traditionally, harm reduction focuses on reducing the negative consequences of substance use, such as overdose or transmission of diseases, rather than insisting on complete abstinence. It involves strategies like needle exchange programs, safe consumption spaces, or medication-assisted treatment (MAT) to manage the risks associated with drug use.

However, when we consider belief change as the critical factor, it offers a deeper, more transformative layer to harm reduction. Here’s how belief change connects to and enhances harm reduction:

1. Shifting the Belief about Substance Use as a Coping Mechanism

• Harm Reduction Focus: Initially, harm reduction might support individuals in continuing substance use but in a safer manner.
• Belief Change Focus: Through belief change, with BEMT, the idea that “I need this substance to cope” or “I can’t function without this” is challenged. When individuals adopt a new belief—“I have the strength to face challenges without substances” or “I can cope with life in healthier ways”—it not only reduces harm but can also gradually lead to recovery and abstinence as a natural result of the belief shift.

2. Addressing the Root Cause of Relapse

• Harm Reduction Focus: Harm reduction strategies may reduce immediate physical risks but often don’t directly address the root cause of addiction—the beliefs that drive continued substance use.
• Belief Change Focus: By targeting permission-granting beliefs (e.g., “I deserve this because life is hard”), belief change directly intervenes at the cognitive level that allows substance use to persist. This makes recovery more sustainable and less reliant on just managing risks or minimizing harm.

3. Empowering Individuals

• Harm Reduction Focus: Harm reduction aims to minimize the dangers of active substance use, which can empower individuals to feel safer but not necessarily empowered to stop using.
• Belief Change Focus: When beliefs shift, individuals no longer see themselves as victims of addiction but as people capable of recovery. The empowerment through belief change shifts the focus from simply managing harm to transforming identity and behavior in a lasting way.

4. Reducing the Need for External Interventions

• Harm Reduction Focus: Many harm reduction strategies rely on external interventions (like MAT, supervised consumption, etc.) to manage the effects of substance use.
• Belief Change Focus: Once core beliefs are transformed, the individual internalizes the tools to cope with life without the need for constant external intervention. This could lead to sustained recovery, where individuals need less reliance on external harm-reduction measures.

5. Increasing Long-Term Success

• Harm Reduction Focus: Harm reduction helps mitigate risks, but without addressing the root cognitive beliefs, it often falls short of achieving long-term behavioral change.
• Belief Change Focus: When individuals change their beliefs about themselves, their worth, and their ability to manage life without substances, long-term recovery becomes more attainable. The internalized belief system creates resilience that supports ongoing recovery efforts.

Conclusion:

Belief change enriches harm reduction by addressing the underlying cognitive drivers of substance use. While harm reduction is crucial in reducing the immediate risks and consequences of substance use, belief change works at a deeper level, transforming the individual’s internal framework and offering a path to sustainable recovery. By changing the beliefs that perpetuate addiction—such as “I need this substance to cope”—harm reduction can evolve from simply minimizing harm to genuinely promoting long-term recovery.

Thus, belief change doesn’t replace harm reduction; it complements it, turning short-term solutions into long-term, transformative recovery.

Ellis’ ABC-DE Theory is the perfect paradigm to effect change using Belief Eye Movement Therapy. It’s a hand and glove fit for harm reduction and behavior change. Ellis, “It’s the beliefs about events that lead to behavior.”

Wanberg, Milkman and Beck state, “There will be no long-term behavior changes unless you change core, permission-granting beliefs, first.”

Are we simply reporters or agents of change? Reports don’t change people. Empowering beliefs can lead to change. That can reduce relapse, recidivism and the destruction of families. Learning how is made easy with this book.

“Belief Eye Movement Therapy” is available on Amazon.com. It can be your first foray into this new skill. Why not give it a go?

Paraphrasing a LinkedIn contributors: “Belief-change with BEMT is a powerful reframe of harm reduction? Doing Belief Eye Movement Therapy for clients helps them to change limiting, permission-granting beliefs and moves them beyond surface-level strategies to address the core beliefs that sustain risky behavior…”

“The idea that belief change is not just therapeutic, but a form of harm reduction is both clinically sound and humanizing…

…Based on that, Belief Eye Movement Therapy offers a proactive path to internal transformation. This is the kind of depth we need more of in recovery work.” This is the opinion of the LinkedIn contributor.

Maggie Langley: “The belief-change harm reduction connection just makes so much sense! Without starting with beliefs, it seems to me like trying to build on an unstable foundation.”

If I could show you how to do this work for your clients, would you be interested in seeing how it works?
Amazon.com: Belief Eye Movement Therapy: Change Can Occur in the Blink of an Eye eBook : DOKMANUS, STAN: Kindle Store