Breaking Bad Habits
I am pretty sure you already know what a habit is, right?
Well, let’s still have a look: Habits are automated behaviors, that start as soon as your brain recognizes a certain situation (‘cue’).
When you are driving a car, for example, most of the things you do are automated. You are not constantly thinking: okay, now I am shifting to the next gear, now I am releasing the clutch, now I am accelerating… No. You are just doing it.
This is the case in many other situations: Brushing your teeth in the morning, showering, making your first tea or coffee…But also: Grabbing snacks when you’re hungry, looking at your phone before going to bed, doom-scrolling social media, or checking your emails when you shouldn’t…
These are all automated behaviors. And I know sometimes it feels impossible to unlearn them.
Here is why.
The Habit Loop
Remember the last time we talked about how stress can trigger the fight-or-flight response? Well, it turns out that breaking a habit does the same. Your brain is used to a certain routine: A cue (1) causes a reaction (2) which leads to the release of dopamine: the reward (3). In other words:
1. Cue
2. Action
3. Reward
4. Repeat
This is classical conditioning and it happens unconsciously. A mechanism that has been extremely beneficial in situations of survival, because it is fast and efficient: You don’t need a lot of energy or brain power and you react immediately.
In dangerous situations — Jackpot.
In a modern-day life — sometimes not so much.
Have you ever thought: ‘I know this is not good for me, but…’?
This is your brain craving dopamine.
The Social Media Example
You are bored (cue), you scroll through your socials (action), dopamine floats through your system (reward). Maybe you realize you are spending more time on your phone than with your loved ones. Potential long-term effects: addiction and increasingly negative emotions. As a result, you might want to pause, deactivate or even delete your social media accounts. If you now stop this behavior suddenly, your brain does not know what to do, because every time you are bored (the cue), your brain still thinks social media (action) is the right next step to receive the reward.
Without any alternatives, there is a dissonance between what is happening, and what your brain expects to happen. This triggers the stress response.
Break Your Habits
How to actually stop this?
There are many different approaches to this, but I decided to focus on one method in particular to give you a guide on how to reprogram a habit of your choice. You can view it like this: Your brain is following a certain program you need to dive into the code of, change some variables and then run it again to get a different output.
I found a study that supports this hypothesis where they tested elicited scripting.
Elici — what?
The goal of the study was to change the pre-sleep habits of people who had trouble sleeping well at night. An interviewer guided the participants through a 30 to 60-minute interview, where they wrote down every single action that was part of their sleeping routine. With this step-by-step script, the participants then had to choose how to improve their routine.
They could either
(1) add a certain behaviour
(2) exchange a certain behaviour
(3) re-organise their behaviours
This had two benefits:
✅ the participants became aware of the potential cues, that activated their bad habits
✅ they did not change the overall length and duration of the habit itself, which helps to decrease the dissonance in your brain
How Did It Go?
‘Reflecting on what I’ve usually done, when I speak out loud, you realize all the [behaviors] that are clearly problematic, and I wouldn’t recommend someone else doing them.’
‘it’s like a recipe … it’s definitely easier to see [what I had to do when it’s] on paper’
‘[by] the end of the week it was just more like a routine for me, I didn’t need to use the flow chart’
Let’s Try It.
To be fair, I have to mention, that this method did not work for each and every one of the participants, but considering the background information and some of the quotes, it might be worth a try.
My main challenge — in terms of bad habits — is currently my waking-up routine. For me, it is really hard to get out of bed, especially when it is cold outside.
My cue: the alarm.
My action: hit the snooze button.
My reward: the cozy feeling
You want to experiment with this yourself?
Here is a quick guide to help you write your script:
Write Your Own Habit Script
- write down all actions that you link to the habit
- cluster your actions
(e.g. social media + facetime = Time on the phone) - find the first and last event of the habit (these are potential cues)
- Use one or all three ways to reorganize your habit script
- Link the cues and actions
(e.g. when I encounter XY, I will do Z) - Take the script with you and use it, when you feel the urge to follow your habit
- Try this for a timeframe of your choice
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Stay mindful,
Carina 🌻
originally posted on https://namascae.ck.page/profile
Sources:
Baladron, J. & Hamker, F. H. (2020). Habit learning in hierarchical cortex–basal ganglia loops. European Journal of Neuroscience, 52(12), 4613–4638. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.14730
Bogacz, R. (2020). Dopamine role in learning and action inference. eLife, 9. https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.53262
Calechman, S. (2022, 2. Mai). How to break a bad habit. Harvard Health. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-break-a-bad-habit-202205022736
Carden, L. & Wood, W. (2018). Habit formation and change. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 20, 117–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.12.009
Mohideen, A., Bouvin, C., Judah, G., Picariello, F., & Gardner, B. (2023). Feasibility and acceptability of a personalised script-elicitation method for improving evening sleep hygiene habits. Health psychology and behavioral medicine, 11(1), 2162904. https://doi.org/10.1080/21642850.2022.2162904
