How to Implement Behavioral Activation in Your Life
Many people seek therapy when their mental health becomes unmanageable, such as when they or their family members begin noticing the symptoms they are facing cause significant distress or impairment in their social or occupational functioning. According to statista.com, roughly 42 million adults in the United States (about 12% of the adult population) received treatment for their mental health in the form of either prescription medications or counseling in 2021. Counseling treatments include everything from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, to Psychoanalysis, to Narrative Therapy, and more. While these treatments have been shown to address specific mental health issues, their usefulness extends beyond treatment for particular diagnoses.
For instance, Behavioral Activation is a therapy approach that has been found to be very effective in treating depression, but its benefits are not limited to people who are suffering depressive symptoms. Anyone seeking positive change in their lives can learn the strategies and skills incorporated in this therapy modality.
What is Behavioral Activation?
Behavioral activation is a form of therapy – and more broadly a way of understanding human motivation, action, and emotion – that focuses on a person’s behavior within their environment and the resulting consequences. Behavioral activation rests on the idea that our behaviors influence our emotional state but that for a variety of reasons, we may be uninclined at different points in life to engage in behaviors that lead towards a more positive emotional state.
For instance, if we are in a phase of life when we are constantly in the company of others (perhaps we are caregivers for an elderly relative, or we are parents of young children), we may crave nothing more than being alone in front of the television once our charges have gone to bed at night. We lose interest in socialization with our friends and retreat from them. Or, if we are experiencing a lot of stress at our place of employment, our preferred evening activity may be unwinding with a beer or cocktail rather than going to the gym or picking up our sketchbook. Activities that used to bring us pleasure feel like work and we just want to relax.
While it can feel good in the moment to be alone, or to have the edge taken off with a drink, isolation from friends and failure to engage in hobbies that bring us a sense of meaning, mastery, or health can have negative impacts over the long run. This is where behavioral activation comes into play. Behavioral activation encourages us to deliberately practice certain activities that will help us feel good in the short term and long term, but that may take a little bit more motivation to begin than lounging in front of the television or having a drink.
Implementing Behavioral Activation
If you were to learn about behavioral activation in the context of formal counseling, your therapist would likely walk you through evaluating: your current activities, behaviors, and coping strategies; the resulting feelings; and past or potential activities and coping skills that you have found fulfilling in the past or might find meaningful in the future. The therapist would then help you develop a step-by-step plan for replacing behaviors that cause negative long-term impacts (even if they feel good in the moment) with behaviors that will lead to more positive feelings and experiences in the future and the present. In addition to helping you explore what might prohibit engagement in positive activities and brainstorm solutions to these pitfalls, your therapist would also help you reflect on and process your experiences in engaging in the new activities as sessions go along.
While a therapist can be very helpful in guiding the process of behavioral activation, you might not find yourself able to or interested in seeking formal counseling right now. You can still benefit from behavioral activation without a therapist, though. Here are a few beginning steps and resources to help you get started:
- Create a list of activities that you find rewarding. Consider how doable the activity is in your current situation and how satisfying it will be to complete it.
- Once you have made your list, decide on a few activities that you would like to try implementing in the upcoming week, then create a schedule for yourself. This step is important because sometimes it can be hard to make healthy, positive decisions in the moment (i.e. when we finally breathe a sigh of relief as our kids fall asleep, or when we get home after a long day), and having a schedule prevents you from needing to make a decision in that weary moment. Instead, you just have to engage in the activity that you had predetermined.
- Tell someone about your plan so that you can lean on them for encouragement and support as you start new activities and change old patterns in your life.
Why Summer is the Perfect Time to Start
With the warmer temperatures, sunnier skies and longer days that this season brings, many people find that their mood improves over the summer, and with that, their motivation to engage in healthy and life-giving behaviors can increase as well. Many of the activities that individuals find pleasurable (being outside, taking walks, spending time in nature, playing sports, gardening, riding a bike) are facilitated by the summer weather.
Take advantage of the season ahead and activate behaviors that will make you happier, healthier, more connected to others, and more likely to enjoy all the good that life has to offer.
Teresa Coda is a therapist providing services at Brook Lane’s North Village Outpatient location. She provides individual and family therapy for adolescents and adults with a variety of mental health concerns. She holds a Masters in Social Work from Columbia School of Social Work and a Masters in Divinity from Harvard Divinity School.