Habits are thoughts or actions that we repeat again and again and as human beings we all have them. Some of those habits we like and are useful to us, while others don’t serve any healthy purpose and are unwanted. It can be difficult to break habits with will power alone but here at The Hypnotherapy Practice our techniques make the whole process simple and comfortable.

Some habits we consciously form and carry out, like going for a walk every Monday. Others are automatic and outside of our conscious awareness, like mindless nail biting or overeating. Many of these habits are ones that we want to be rid of because they conflict with the way we actually want to behave. However, because these habits happen without any conscious effort on our part they often prove very difficult to break without help to access that part of the unconscious mind that produces them.

Habit Formation

We are all born with the ability to form habits easily in order to help us with one of the most important tasks of survival; learning. At a very basic level the nervous system is designed to learn important information by repeating it. This process of habituating, or repeating something again and again, also helps to bring us closer to that which gives us pleasure and move us away from that which causes us pain. As this learning process is one that is pleasurable for us, so we will instinctively repeat behaviour that provides us with more knowledge and control of our surroundings. For example, when we first learned that fire burns, although it was painful, the new learning ensured future pleasure i.e. no more burns. The habit of avoiding fire is therefore created.

Unfortunately, this repeated behaviour and habit formation which brings us pleasure is very easily distorted. Habits may have immediate positive or pleasurable benefits but they may also have negative consequences for us physically and emotionally, as well as going against what we actually want for ourselves. For example, at some point in the past we may have come home from a difficult day and eaten some chocolate, and then immediately felt better. The unconscious part of the mind then stores this sequence of events, “feel bad, eat chocolate, feel better”. On the next difficult day, the mind will automatically prompt us to repeat this useful behaviour to gain temporary pleasure and avoid immediate pain, and so an emotional eating habit is formed and weight gain may result. The unconscious part of the mind that has stored the sequence of events, “feel bad, eat chocolate, bite nails, suck thumb, drink wine, smoke cigarette, feel better” is not the part of us that can accurately evaluate the continued usefulness of this habit.

Habit Breaking

At The Hypnotherapy Practice we will use Clinical Hypnotherapy to help you eliminate unwanted habits by helping the unconscious mind which is responsible for creating the habitual behaviour to consider its reasons for that behaviour. Once the underlying reasons for the habit are identified and dealt with the unconscious mind has no need or reason to produce the unwanted habitual behaviour. Along with Clinical Hypnotherapy, we will also use Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) to help you become more aware of the behaviour so that you are in control of your choices about whether to continue with the behaviour or not. As a result, next time you are faced with the same choice your control is even stronger.