Habits

Habits are routines of behaviour that are repeated regularly and tend to occur sub-consciously without directly thinking consciously about them.    Examples of bad habits are, nail biting, stammering, snoring, bedwetting and obsessive compulsive disorder. Other bad habits include body scratching, nose picking, and other socially unacceptable behaviours.

Some people learn to conquer their own bad habits by means of re-enforcement and it has become generally agreed that the following three steps will help break bad habits:

Become more aware of your bad habit.  Interrupt the behaviour and isolate it from the chain of normal activities. Then you might imagine an association between the behaviour and something repulsive.  For example to break a nail biting habit imagine your finger nails covered with sewage.

If no-one else will reward you for making progress, then provide your own rewards.   For example, buy yourself a special treat after you have abandoned your bad habit for a pre-agreed period of time.

Do something incompatible with the offending habit.  For example,  if you have a nervous habit of hunching up your shoulders, practice depressing your shoulders to neutralise this negative behaviour.

Apart from the three self help steps above,  Clinical Hynotherapy is the proven treatment to will break bad habits as we direct the therapy towards deeply embedded  behaviours that reside within the sub-conscious mind.