Chain analysis

Mapping the sequence between what happened and your behavior.

The purpose: to find where patterns can be interrupted.

The six links

01
Vulnerability factors
What lowered your threshold before anything happened.

Things that reduce regulation capacity before a challenging event occurs. Sleep deprivation, accumulated stress, unresolved conflict, prior emotional activation.

02
The prompting event
The specific moment that started the chain.

What happened immediately before the urge, thought, or impulse.

03
The links
Everything between the event and the behavior, internal and external.

Actions, body sensations, cognitions, environmental events, feelings.

04
The action urge
The impulse right before you acted.

What happened between activation and action where a different choice remains possible.

05
The behavior
The protection pattern that emerged, described without judgment.

The more clearly the behavior is named, the more clearly it is understood, and the more directly it is addressed.

06
The consequences
What followed, immediately and over time.

Short-term consequences reinforce the behavior: pressure reduced, discomfort avoided, conflict ended. Long-term consequences reveal the cost: trust eroded, credibility compromised, value-behavior discrepancy widened.

How to run one

01
Pick one protective behavior you want to do differently
Name it in a sentence someone else could verify.
02
Work backward through the six links
The gaps are where the information is.
03
Find the earliest link where you still had options
That's where the practice goes.
04
Do the first several with someone else
It helps to have someone else find your blind spots.

Why it's helpful

Behavior that looks sudden isn't. Once you can see the action urge, you can do something other than act on it.

A chain tells you where to practice.

Adapted from chain analysis in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Linehan, 1993).