Create a vision. Decide to do something different. We ping-pong back and forth between our new choice and set patterns, between desired and undesired behavior. Learning new behaviors takes time and practice, but shouldn't induce heavy stress unless we try to hold on to our old reality. Stress and anxiety increases.
Problems get worse and worse.
Critical Mass. A Crisis occurs. The old reality becomes so intolerable that something breaks inside us. We walk away from a bad situation, tell the Truth, just say No. We gain new insight, and inner and outer freedom. It most cases there are Aftershocks to deal with and Aftereffects to consider.