Community Reinforcement
When an environment conducive to abstinence must be actively developed.
Actively strengthen an environment that makes healthy behavior, abstinence or stabilization more likely and attractive.
When does this fit?
When sustainable change depends on the environment supporting behavior instead of constantly undermining it.
Priority in the path
This node sits close to acute crisis and should be read more as an early step than as later deepening.
What this is about
Community Reinforcement is a DBT distress tolerance skill for addiction that addresses the social and environmental conditions that sustain addictive behavior. The approach, drawn from behavioral reinforcement principles, focuses on restructuring one's community so that abstinent behavior is rewarded and addictive behavior is not.
This includes identifying reinforcers in the social environment that currently support addiction, building relationships and activities that support abstinence, and reducing contact with people, places, and situations that trigger urges. The core premise is that behavioral patterns — including addiction — are maintained by their consequences in the environment, and changing those consequences is a primary route to change.
Continue in practice
Abstinence, awareness and environment
Community reinforcement works with conditions in the environment. Clear Mind adds awareness of relapse risks; dialectical abstinence combines commitment to abstinence with a constructive response to setbacks.
Clear Mind
When the real problem is not an acute crisis, but rather dangerous carelessness or relapse blindness.
Also in: Emotion Regulation
Dialectical Abstinence
When abstinence or change goals require clear determination and a flexible return to the course.
Also in: Emotion Regulation
Sources and references
Show where this node comes from and how source-near or practice-near it is.