To recover from a behavioral addiction, do you have to go through all the stages of change?

To recover from a behavioral addiction, do you have to go through all the stages of change?

Marc Kern (Addiction Expert, Director of Addiction Alternatives) gives expert video advice on: How is a behavioral addiction similar to a substance behavioral addiction?; What is an "addictive personality"?; What can be done about an addictive personality? and more...

Generally speaking, people go through these stages of change when recovering from a behavioural addiction several times. They go all the way from pre-contemplation to action, sometimes to maintenance, and maybe even have a couple of weeks, or months, or years of maintenance and fall prey to the addiction again, then they have to start back all over again. They're not precise, sometimes you skip over certain stages, but they are a general orientation to help the clinician, or the individual, understand. Or the housewife, who wants to understand how to engage her husband, she should not assume that her husband's motivation is, again, the action stage, or necessarily in the contemplation phase, when she approaches him.