The Habit Loop of Bad Habits
By: Becky Searls
Tags: Neuroscience, Growth Mindset, Reflections, Habits, Mindfulness

The Habit Loop of Bad Habits: Why we Form Maladaptive Behavior Patterns, Keep them Going, and Struggle to Change

Take the time to learn the neuroscience behind how your mind works in order to understand yourself better, be more self-compassionate, and be more likely to make positive changes that stick. Becky Searls Follow Dec 26, 2020 · 10 min read

Christmas has come and gone. Now for the somewhat depressing, post-holiday letdown of the week before a New Year begins.

Perhaps your thoughts are turning toward the future and how you’d like 2021 to be different. Maybe you, like many people, are overwhelmed with pandemic fatigue along with the normal stressors of daily life and are trying to think of a New Year’s Resolution you can actually stick to?

Or, maybe you don’t do the whole NYE resolution thing, but you know, thinking back over 2020, that some things in your life need to change moving forward.

Wherever you’re at mentally and emotionally as we come to the close of a difficult year, is 100% valid. It’s been a long, hard slog. Be sure to take a moment to appreciate all you’ve gone through, good and bad, celebrate your wins, and perhaps dream a little about your future as you reflect on what you wish had been different!

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a few bad habits that you’ve picked up over time. Some of them may have been with you for so long you can’t even remember when or why they started. You may even identify with your habits to the point that they have become who you are in a sense (are you a runner? a cyclist? a productive person? lazy? an early riser? a coffee, wine, or chocolate addict? someone who bites their nails or pops their pimples?)

Habits can be a really good thing. Our brains are set up to learn based on rewards, and thank goodness for that! Imagine if we did not have habits for our daily routines. Imagine if each and every day you had to re-learn how to get up, shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, make coffee or breakfast, and tie your shoes. You would be utterly exhausted by noon if you didn’t have the capacity to automate the majority of your daily behaviors. Habits allow us to free up mental bandwidth and energy for other, more important tasks.

But, sometimes we develop bad habits. How does this happen? Well, we develop maladaptive habits in the exact same way that we learn a neutral or a good habit. We learn a short-term solution to a problem, and our brains file it away. Then, we find ourselves going back to those behaviors and repeating them. If we don’t become aware enough to realize that these behaviors were only ever meant to be short term behaviors, they can become long term habits.

Even our mental patterns like anxiety or anxious thinking can become a habit. This is because our brains form associations quickly. For example, perhaps at one point as a child, you had to take a test in school. You felt anxious about it, took the test, but then got a decent grade on it. The grade was a reward that resulted in your brain releasing some dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter.

Because our brains are wired to form associations, based on the past, our brain predicts the future. Evolutionarily, our habits probably formed very early on as a way to find food (eat food — remember the sweet taste (reward) /where you found it— stay alive). So, our brains try to remember past behaviors, thoughts, or feelings and associate them with outcomes.

If outcomes are positive (e.g. a good grade) then we think that the association with the feeling, thought or behavior you had around the time of the action (e.g. feeling anxious or nervous) caused that outcome. This leads us to create (often untrue or simply unhelpful) habits of thinking or doing. We may even think something like “my anxiety is what drives me to be so successful”, but this isn’t necessarily helpful or true. It’s just your brain trying to find a pattern and replicate it.

It’s helpful to know that this is how your brain works, because if you can become aware of the way your brain forms associations — helpful or not — you can break the correlation, and, if you keep strengthining the mental muscle of awareness, you can become disenchanted with your bad habits, and, eventually, replace wthem with something better.

So why do we keep doing things that are bad for us?

Our brains are pattern recognition machines. That’s part of why we form associations and continue to play out habits that may or may not be good for us. But there’s more to it than that. Our brains are also trying to protect us and simply don’t like change. And, our brains are very aware of anything new or different (again, going back to evolutionary reasons, perhaps because anything new or different in our environment may have been a sign of danger and something to avoid).

These days, however, we are more likely to be engaging in bad habits that don’t serve us. So, we may go to make a change, but our brains, still wired to be hyper-vigilant and aware of any difference, resists that change and tries to intervene and keep things the same, telling us:

“Hey! Don’t do that — stick with what you know! It’s safer!”

In this way, we often end up sticking with our old habits, even if they are outdating or no longer serving us. Any time we try to change a habit, it can be pretty uncomfortable. It’s worth noting that all change is stressful — even good change. Sometimes good changes are especially stressful! For example, the birth of a child. On the one hand, most people say the day their children are born is the most joyful day of their lives. But, research shows a huge dip in happiness and marital happiness around this same time. So, again, it’s helpful to just know that this is just how your brain works: all change, even good change, is stressful. And stress is naturally uncomfortable. So, our brains resist change, even changes that are actually good or healthy for us. Our minds are just trying to protect us, even if sometimes they’re somewhat misguided in how they go about it.

There’s an interesting study called “Sad as a matter of choice?” by Millgrim, et al (2015) that suggests a possible explanation for why we might keep choosing to live out bad habits. Researchers studied people with and without depression. and assessed how they chose to regulate their emotions. First, they gave them pictures and then gave them choices in music. For both of these options, depressed participants were more likely than nondepressed people to choose sad pictures and music that maintained or increased their level of sadness. Next, they taught all participants emotion regulation strategies, and then gave them a choice of which strategies to apply. Even armed with education on emotion regulation, the depressed individuals were more likely to choose strategies that kept them feeling sad.

Why would this happen? The researchers speculated that the findings demonstrate that choosing maladaptive emotion regulation patterns (essentially a bad habit / pattern of thinking) was a way for the depressed individuals to validate themselves.

So, essentially it all goes back to our brain’s desire to resist change, even good or positive change, and stick with what it knows, what’s familiar, and what it thinks is safest for us. But, knowing this, we can bring awareness to our bad habits and realize that this is just how our brains work. If we do anythign enough, it can become a habit. Then, we identify with our habits — good or bad — and they become who we are.

So, of course it’s going to be hard to change a bad habit. Because you’re really not just changing a habit, you’re changing who you are.

So is it impossible to break a bad habit? How do I change?

Good question. It’s not impossible to break a bad habit, but it is definitely the case that we tend to go way too fast when setting goals, resolutions, and trying to make changes.

New Year’s is the perfect example.

On January first, people often decide that in the space of 24 hours, they are going to overhaul habits that have been with them for a lifetime. They’re going to suddenly go from smoker to nonsmoker, sedentary to someone who works out every day, overeating to restricting, or whatever else, overnight.

This is destined for failure. Not because these are bad goals (although some of them might need some tweaking). These changes are destined not to stick because we skip over a very important stage of habit change.

There are basically 3 parts to habit loops: trigger-behavior-reward

For example:

feel hungry — eat food— stay alive

feel anxious — eat chocoate — feel relief

feel anxious — breathing practice — feel relief

feel stressed — call a friend — feel better

feel restless — exercise — feel calmer

Some of these are better habit loops than others. By “better” in this case I just mean more adaptive and more available to you at any time. For example, while eating chocolate does often provide short-term relief from a moment of anxiety, learning and practicing various breathing techniques can provide a better way to unwind because it’s always available to you internally.

The trick to true habit change is to become aware of your habit loops (trigger-behavior-reward) and to realize that sometimes the “reward” is not what you thought it was. Sometimes it’s helpful to think of the reward as jus the outcome of the behavior. It’s not necessarily positive.

For example:

Feel anxious — chew your fingernails — feel ashamed and regretful

It’s important to stop and ask yourself:

“What did I get from this?”

after a negative habit loop plays out. This can be really hard to do at first, because we are often on autopilot, acting out bad habits automatically (that is, after all, what habits are for — automating actions to free up brain space).

It can take a lot of practice to get curious enough to pause and ask yourself “What did I get from this?” And to stay in that uncomfortable spot, which is often were shame shows up, and really be thoughtful.

But, that spot, that incredibly uncomfortable, shame-filled, regretful moment after you engage in a bad habit — that’s the key to becoming disenchanted with your bad habit(s).

Don’t rush this process. If possible, find a mirror, make eye contact with yourself, and ask again: “What did I get from this?” You may also want to journal to get clarity.

Often times the bad habits we’ve developed were short term solutions that provided much-needed relief during a difficult moment. Our brains remembered the relief, formed an association, and we repeated the behavior the next time a similarly challenging moment came up for us.

Over time, our short term solutions became long term problems. This is completely understandable and normal. What’s more, once we understand that this is just how our brains work, we can be more compassionate and gentle with ourselves. Instead of beating ourselves up for once again messing up or failing we can realize “wow, I really don’t get anything from this…other than more pain, grief, shame, or anxiety.”

Only once we really understand how our brains work and that the key to habit change is to first become disenchanted with our bad habits can we start to change. So, to bring this post full circle, let’s summarize:

1) we learn habits to be more efficient — and habits can be very helpful!

2) brains find and make associations (like linking anxiety to performance) — which may not be true or helpful.

3) our brains don’t like change and alert us to changes in routine — even good changes — and send up stress and resistance signals.

4) often our short-term solutions become long-term maladaptive patterns of behavior that are problematic. Spending time to slow down and ask ourselves what we get from those behaviors allows us to become more disenchanted with them, which paves the way for change.