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Breaking bad habits

Everyone has habits, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with them. Some are pretty useful — maybe you lay out your clothes for work the night before or automatically turn off the lights when you leave a room.

But other habits, such as biting your nails, drinking caffeine too late in the day, or hitting snooze too many times, might not be so beneficial.

Habits also sit on a continuum in our ability to exercise control over them: Some are mild, like taking off your shoes and dumping them in the middle of the living room every night; others are moderate, like eating dinner in front of the TV, or drinking too much when you go to a party; and then those that are strong and addictive — like smoking.
Habits can arise through repetition. They are a normal part of life, and are often helpful. We wake up every morning, shower, comb our hair or brush our teeth without being aware of it. When behaviors become automatic, it gives us an advantage, because the brain does not have to use conscious thought to perform the activity. This frees up our brains to focus on different things.
Habits can also develop when good or enjoyable events trigger the brain’s “reward” centers. This can set up potentially harmful routines, such as overeating, smoking, drug or alcohol abuse, gambling and even compulsive use of computers and social media.
Habits become hard to break because they are deeply wired, by constant repetition, into our brains. And when you add pleasure to them, like you have with drugs or porn, for example, the pleasure centers of the midbrain get fired up as well.
The general machinery by which we build both kinds of habits are the same, whether it’s a habit for overeating or a habit for getting to work without really thinking about the details.

But there’s one important difference.
And this difference makes the pleasure-based habits so much harder to break. Enjoyable behaviors can prompt your brain to release a chemical called dopamine. If you do something over and over, and dopamine is there when you’re doing it, that strengthens the habit even more. When you’re not doing those things, dopamine creates the craving to do it again. This explains why some people crave drugs, even if the drug no longer makes them feel particularly good once they take it.

In a sense, then, parts of our brains are working against us when we try to overcome bad habits. These routines can become hardwired in our brains. And the brain’s reward centers keep us craving the things we’re trying so hard to resist.

The good news is, humans are not simply creatures of habit. We have many more brain regions to help us do what’s best for our health.

Habits are also patterns of behavior and it is the breaking of patterns that is the key to breaking the habits themselves. Usually there is a clear trigger to start the pattern. Sometimes the triggers are emotional — the wanting a drink or cigarette or nail-biting driven by stress. Other times the trigger is more simply situational and environmental: You see the TV and couch as soon as you hit the front door, and now your brain connects the dots, and eating dinner in front of the TV on the couch is not far behind. More often it is a combination of both — the mix of social anxiety and the party environment leads to your heavier drinking.

So if you have habits you want to break, here are some steps to get you started :

Identify your triggers. Remember, triggers are the first step in developing a habit. Identifying the triggers behind your habitual behaviors is the first step in moving past them.
Spend a few days tracking your habit to see whether it follows any patterns.
Note things like:

Where does the habitual behavior happen?

What time of day?