Unwanted habits

A habit is a learned behaviour that we repeat so often, that we begin to do it without even thinking about it. Certain habits can be useful e.g. the habit of daily brushing our teeth, or putting on our seatbelt when we get into a car; these are habits that we build on purpose, to achieve a positive outcome, every habit was once a solution.

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So, even if our conscious mind now finds certain habits that we have, either unpleasant, anti-social or counter-productive, at some point our subconscious mind perceived the now unwanted habit as useful to us.

For example, do you:

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Bite your nails?

Grind your teeth?

Pull your hair out?

Suck your thumb?

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These habits are often built unknowingly; they may have begun as self-soothing forms of behaviour and may have helped to relieve stress, or perhaps to relieve boredom, or to numb feelings of anger or sadness. If an action is consistently linked with positive feelings, such as soothing, relieving or numbing, we can become conditioned to seek it out or repeat it.

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Habits are loops that we repeat automatically; A cue triggers our habit; we get a reward from it and so we repeat it. For example; if we find that biting our nails has a positive emotional effect e.g. it comforts us, or relieves stress or boredom, or numbs negative emotions; we are likely to try biting our nails again the next time we are in a similar situation. Each time it works for us, it strengthens the association between comfort, relief or numbing and biting our nails, and so we become conditioned to repeat it.

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You may, or may not, be aware of what the initial positive intention of your habit was or what triggers your habit. If you are not aware of this, then hypnotherapy can help to find this out. Once you are aware of why you carry out your unwanted habit, we can then look to find other ways to achieve the positive intention, other than by way of your unwanted habit.

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Changing your unwanted habit:

Habits, by their very nature, can seem almost impossible to change, take a look here to see some tips on what you can do to help yourself to change unwanted habits. if you would also like undertake some hypnotherapy to help you to make the changes that you want to make, so that you can live the life that you want to live please contact me.