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Negotiating with God, others, and self to do or to stop doing a series of things in order to prevent a loss, hurt, failure, or uncomfortable circumstance.
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Making resolutions to change a way of living in order to avoid the consequences of the current life-style.
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Shopping for the guru, doctor, or belief system with the "answer'' for our life or the “means" to do away with our troubles.
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Minimizing problems and the positing of quick solutions for them.
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The unending quest for “helping'' methods to change or improve our lives.
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Chronic mistrust in established answers or methods of change required to help or to heal.
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Resistance to trusting and to working closely with the helping agents in our lives who are willing to assist us in changing or improving our situation.
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Loss of faith in the answers we are being given on how to treat or address our problems.
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Lack of taking personal responsibility in addressing our problems.
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“Looking good'' for helpers but ignoring and not cooperating with them in reality.
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Convincing ourselves that “others'' don't know what they are talking about and that we have the answers to our problems.
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Ignoring those who confront us with our problems by explaining away our behavior and offering a variety of intellectual explanations for our motives and actions.
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“Giving time" and waiting for our problems to solve themselves with no direct intervention taking place.
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Believing in the myth that “more is better" and involving ourselves in a variety of different intervention and treatment modalities in order to make the problem go away "as soon as possible."
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Handing over to others (e.g., therapists, counselors, doctors, friends) the responsibility for resolving our problems.
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Exempting ourselves from any direct responsibility for the resolution or remediation of our problems.
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Ignoring the advice of the professionals from whom we have requested help for our problems.
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Second guessing the motives and advice of others as they attempt to help us address our problems.
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Our unwillingness to admit that some problems are so great that we cannot solve them on our own and that we need help to work on them.
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“Putting off the agony'' of facing the problems and the unwillingness to suffer the immediate pain in treating the problem. Putting off the pain to another time when we will be “better prepared'' to handle it.
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Asking for time so that we can prepare ourselves for the problem and its consequences.
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The unwillingness to be “prevention oriented," to look into the future and see what we could be doing today to prevent illness or problems from occurring.
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Procrastinating in what we know we need to do while convincing ourselves that the problem will not recur or increase in magnitude.
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Pointing out all of the good things we have or are doing in our life as a means of justifying our taking no action to resolve the current problem.
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Grabbing onto a simplistic, minimally painful, quick solution to a complex problem.
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Salving of one's conscience by taking some indirect action (e.g., contributing money to feed the hungry in Africa) in response to an immediate personal problem (e.g., a family member is involved in an unhealthy life-style and we are unwilling or unable to confront them on it.)
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Giving a person with problems material things instead of our time and positive attention hoping that by this their problems will be resolved.
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Convincing oneself that ignoring or using an indirect means of addressing another person's problems is the best way to help that person (e.g., let them know we love and care for them and that we are always there for them when they need us rather that confront them with the problem.)
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Looking for the “helper" whose solutions to our problems are most palatable to us.
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"Doctor Shopping" for the doctor or helper who promises to cure or fix the problem with the least amount of effort and pain and with total success even though others say it will never be that easy to solve.
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Doing “good'' for others in the hope that such actions will solve our problems.
