Bad Habits

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A bad habit is a negative behavior pattern. Common examples: 

- Procrastination 

- Fidgeting

- Overspending

- Stereotyping

- Gossips 

- Bullying

- Nail-biting

- Hair pulling

- Skin picking

- Teeth grinding

- Binge drinking

- Over eating

- Smoking

- Wasting hours playing computer games on or internet when there’s really something else which you should be doing

- Eating a whole packet of biscuits (and hardly tasting any of them, sadly!)

And many more...

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When do bad habits strike? And how do habits start?

Usually, you perform your bad habits when you are feeling anxious, restless, tired, stressed at work, hungry, bored, nervous, too busy, fed up, or when you are trying to concentrate on something important.. You use bad habits to distract yourself, to take a moment out, to think about fewer than five things at once, to make yourself feel better. Although it’s usually very hard to remember exactly when and how your bad habit started, the chances are that back when it started, you got something out of it; it did make you feel better.

Comfort eating is a good example of this – you’ve had a bad day, and you want something to cheer you up – and chocolate or chips (or whatever your own personal weakness is!) do the trick. You enjoy them and do feel better for a bit. The first time you bite your nails, or pulled your hair, it succeeded in distracting you from whatever it was which was making you stressed or anxious. Grinding your teeth probably made you feel stronger, in control, more determined to beat whatever problem was bothering you. But as you repeat the habit which made you feel better when you first tried it, it brings its own problems.

Comfort eating leads you to put weight on; you’re embarrassed by the way your bitten nails look; you begin to get headaches or earache because of the teeth grinding, or it stops you from sleeping properly; your family worry about your health because you smoke; your head is sore and you are ashamed that patches of hair are missing. And as the habit becomes more and more of a subconscious action and you don’t even notice you’re doing it, it stops having any affect at all – it doesn’t make you feel one bit better. In fact you feel worse. You can stop this cycle. You CAN control your actions, stop nail biting, stop hair pulling, stop smoking, lose weight – you can break your bad habits. This is where hypnosis is so effective.

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How does hypnosis break bad habits?

Hypnosis can be described as focused concentration and deep relaxation. Rather than subconsciously – unthinkingly – indulging your bad habit, hypnosis makes you become very mindful of what you are doing. This means you notice your hand reaching towards your mouth, or towards the plate of biscuits, or that you are clenching your jaw and grinding your teeth, or hair pulling, rather than just automatically doing it. Your bad habit is subconscious so you don’t even think about it or make a choice when you do it – no wonder it is hard to control it! Hypnosis makes you aware of what you are doing.

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One of the hypnosis techniques used to stop nail biting is a suggestion that whenever you want to bite your nails, you must turn your hand upside down to do it; there are many variations on this. This type of technique is known as Habit Reversal Training. It works by making you very conscious of when your bad habits are happening. Habit Reversal Training also involves self hypnosis and hypnosis.

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It is much easier to stop something when you become fully aware that you are doing it. And when you find yourself habitually thinking something – “I’ve really got to have chocolate right now” – hypnosis enables you to override this thought with thoughts which are more accurate, appropriate and useful – “Yes, I do want chocolate now, but not as much as I want to lose weight” “The taste of chocolate lasts only a few seconds – my weight and appearance affect me for the other 18 hours a day I’m awake!”

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Hypnosis reduces stress and anxiety to break bad habits.

As well as the specific suggestions which you will be given whilst in hypnosis to help you break your habit, the very deep state of relaxation which hypnosis gives you means that you are far less likely to develop the state of anxiety which leads to your carrying our your bad habit, too. Hypnosis helps you feel calmer and more relaxed, enables you to manage stress, to feel more in control of your actions and much more aware of them, and to replace your bad habits with a more positive response.