How To Break A Bad Habit: A Research-Based Psychological Approach
Humans tend to be creatures of habit, relying on patterns, routines, and rituals to help us meet our needs without having to expend too much cognitive effort. While many habits can be beneficial for navigating daily life, bad habits can have the opposite effect, interfering with our ability to achieve our goals, maintain good health, or spend time meaningfully.
Whether good or bad, however, habits are usually deeply ingrained in the brain, and breaking them often involves a period of “unlearning” the old habit and learning a new one in its place. Understanding the habit loop, implementing a reward system, and tracking your progress can be helpful. Online or in-person therapy can provide professional support in eliminating bad habits and developing healthier ones.
Understanding bad habits
Habits can be defined as behaviors we engage in with little to no conscious thought or effort. Bad habits tend to be those that negatively affect us in some way, such as wasting our time, damaging our health, or impacting our relationships.
If you struggle with a bad habit, you may have already tried to break it, only to find yourself engaging in the same behavior again. This cycle can be frustrating and make it seem as if your own brain is acting against your best interests. In cases where the bad habit has evolved into a compulsion or addiction, it can even seem as though you lack free will.
Why bad habits can be hard to break: Understanding the neuroscience of habits
To understand why breaking bad habits can be so tricky, it might help to learn about what’s happening in your brain when you engage in them. By the time a behavior has become a habit, it has usually been encoded deep within the basal ganglia, a group of brain structures responsible for habits and rituals. As a result, you may engage in the behavior without significant cognitive effort.
Habits typically form due to the brain’s reward system. When you engage in a pleasurable or worthwhile activity, pleasure hormones like dopamine are usually released, signaling to the brain that that behavior is “good.” With repeated exposure, the brain may become conditioned to seek out and repeat those behaviors.
However, the resulting reward may not necessarily align with your goals, values, or desires. For example, the small pleasure of seeing positive reactions to a social media post may be enough to trigger this dopamine response, even if you might ultimately derive more satisfaction from spending your time in a more fulfilling or productive way.
Digital habits, in particular, tend to be especially hard to break. Tech companies often strive to create a frictionless, reward-rich user experience, and with modern life demanding seemingly constant digital interactions, these pleasurable experiences are often accessible through a simple tap or click.
How to form new habits: Strategies for rewiring your brain
While bad habits can be frustrating, it may be relieving to know that they can be broken. It can take time, however. While updated evidence may be necessary, one study found that it usually took between 18 and 254 days for participants to form an eating, drinking, or activity behavior. With mindfulness, effort, and patience, you may find that replacing negative habits with positive ones becomes increasingly feasible.
1. Understand the habit loop
You could begin by understanding the habit loop, which generally states that the cue triggers the habit, which results in a reward. Reflect on each component of your habit. Are there certain situations where you tend to be more vulnerable to engaging in your bad habit? Is your habit made easier by something in your environment? What is the reward that reinforces your bad habit?
Once you’ve become aware of these cues and rewards, you may be better equipped to make the necessary adjustments to your routine.
2. Check in with your values
Next, reflect on your values, goals, and desires. If your habit doesn’t align with the version of yourself you envision, consider what steps you could take to bridge the gap between your current behaviors and those that reflect your ideal self.
In James Clear’s bestselling book Atomic Habits, he suggests taking a “fake it ‘til you make it” approach to habit change. You might start by adopting small, manageable behaviors that align with the kind of person you want to be, and with time, you may become that person.
3. Learn a new habit
Though it can be common to use words like “quitting” to describe the process of breaking a bad habit, it might be more helpful to think of it as learning a new one. For example, someone who wants to stop scrolling on their phone in the morning might choose to read a book instead.
It can also help to attach your new habits to current habits, a practice Clear refers to as “habit stacking.” This might help you automate the habit more quickly, as it generally entails turning existing parts of your routine into “cues,” thus triggering a positive habit loop.
4. Implement a reward system
A reward system may be another factor worth considering, particularly as you actively work to break your bad habit. You could incorporate rewards for maintaining new habits or reaching milestones, for example.
It can also help to become mindful of the intrinsic rewards associated with your new habits. The person who wants to avoid their phone in the morning might, for instance, bring awareness to the sense of calm and mental clarity they feel, or notice all that there is to appreciate about starting the day with a book.
5. Look for ways to eliminate cues
When you first take inventory of the “habit loop” that drives your undesirable behavior, you may notice some of the cues that lead up to it. It can be helpful to find ways to minimize or eliminate these stimuli. For the chronic phone user, that might mean eliminating the visual cue by charging the phone in another room overnight.
If your cue is situational, you might look for ways to alter your routine. For example, someone who notices that their sweet tooth kicks in while watching television in the evening might choose to play a game or phone a friend after dinner. Over time, this can weaken the habit loop.
6. Track your progress
Habit tracking can be an effective way to monitor your progress over time, and many find the simple act of noting their progress to provide a small sense of accomplishment (that is, a dopamine release). Habit tracking can also help you identify patterns or trends in your behavior and can also help you stay motivated to change your behavior.
You can find several helpful tracking apps to download to your phone, or you could make your own on a poster or in a journal. However, you track your habits, consider checking in at the same time each day so that you don’t forget.
Therapy for building healthy habits
If you’re finding it particularly challenging to unlearn a bad habit, it may be worth seeking help from a therapist. Mental health professionals often help individuals recover from problematic behavior patterns, including bad habits, compulsions, and addictions.
Therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) can be particularly effective for managing and changing behavior patterns. These approaches have been empirically validated across multiple studies, offering strategies to cope with stress, anxiety, and other underlying triggers of bad habits.
Benefits of online therapy
You can find licensed mental health professionals who specialize in these types of therapy through online platforms like BetterHelp. With online therapy, you can schedule sessions that fit into your existing routine and attend them from the location of your choice, potentially making it simple to integrate therapy as a new healthy habit.
Effectiveness of online therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy is frequently used to break bad habits and establish healthier ones, and many studies report that online CBT tends to be just as effective as its in-person counterpart.
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