How to quit your ‘bad’ habits

What are your ‘bad’ habits that you can’t seem to stop doing?

Is it doom scrolling social media?

Is it picking at snacks meant for the kids' lunch boxes?

A glass of wine at the end of the night that turns into three?

Maybe it’s a compulsion to step on the scales every morning?

I put the word ‘bad’ in quotation marks because I don’t think these habits are necessarily bad. But I also think any behaviour, if it becomes a compulsive habit that feels impossible to stop doing, is likely to have a negative consequence from the accumulation of doing it repeatedly.

It can be common to flip-flop mentally between justifying these behaviours while we are doing them, to feeling shame or sadness in the aftermath.

‘I’ve had such a long day, I’m exhausted… I deserve this…’

To then- ‘Why on earth did I do that? I feel terrible now…’

This way of thinking results in a sense of confusion about what the right course of action even is. We all want to be ‘balanced’, don’t we? We know being extreme in either direction isn’t good for us either. 

It becomes even harder when said habits that we can’t seem to stop doing aren’t necessarily the ones you’d hear other people - either experts on the radio or colleagues at the water cooler - talking about how they’re not good for you.

For example, you might question whether your habit of stepping on the scales every morning is productive for you. But then you hear somebody explain, ‘If you want to lose weight, you just have to weigh yourself each day to hold yourself accountable. If I hadn’t done that and just been too scared all the time, I’d have never lost that 15 kilos. I still weigh myself daily because I want to make sure I don’t undo my hard work.’

Because this person has shared their convincing rationale for how daily weigh-ins worked for them, you feel justified in this habit. Even though, you are aware that seeing that number each morning affects your mood for the rest of the day and has an influence on your behaviours, and sometimes results in you ignoring your body’s signals so that you can either get in extra steps or a workout that day or skip one of your meals. 

I’m not saying that weighing yourself daily is good or bad. I think it comes down to the effect it is having on a person’s emotional state, and the reason for why they feel the need to do so. 

In that case, how are we ever supposed to know if our habits are helping or harming us?

Well, it’s probably a bit of both.

Habits, particularly of the kind where you would mentally struggle not to do them - are always present for a reason.

Whenever you started that habit, there was a positive rationale behind it, because it made you feel better in the moment. 

We keep doing them because regardless of whether they still make us feel the same way, we start to expect to feel better by doing them, or we’re willing to take the chance of feeling better even if there’s an equal or perhaps greater chance it’ll make us feel worse.

I absolutely believe in balance, and not being extreme on either end of the spectrum with our behaviours. But it’s important to be aware that the mind will justify behaviours that could be making us feel worse. We need to recognise and challenge ourselves when a habit is developing almost an addiction-like compulsivity to it. 

I encourage you to examine the habits you feel ‘on the fence’ about - the ones where you know they’re probably displacing other, more beneficial activities and potentially making you feel bad by doing them all the time, but in moderation, they could be benign or harmless. 

Rather than observing them through a lens of shame and telling yourself you must stop doing them, ask yourself instead ‘how has this behaviour been serving me?’. 

Once you have an understanding of where the origin of this particular habit comes from, you can explore alternatives to that habit that may fulfill the need that you have been trying to meet.

Some of my fantastic clients recently have brought up the idea of ‘dopamine menus’ - creating a list of calming, fun, or distracting activities that get you out of your head and act as alternatives to your go-to coping mechanisms. Whether that’s doing something creative, taking a walk in nature, tidying a room, creating a playlist, reading a book, doing some breathwork or yoga, or phoning a friend - if you have a selection of accessible activities you can turn to when you’re in need of a pick-me-up, you’re less likely to turn to scrolling social media, over-eating, alcohol, nit-picking your body, etc. 

The benefit of examining your habits in this way is that it helps you practise self-compassion and removes shame from the equation. This is incredibly important, because as we know - feeling a sense of shame all the time doesn’t actually work for behaviour change long term. It weakens your relationship with yourself, meaning you’ll be less inclined to want to look after your own physical and mental well-being.