Disrupting Personal Habits

“Habits can be incredibly useful. They allow the mind to multitask and in so doing enable efficiency. Behaviors get linked together into a routine, and once the chain of action is initiated, the rest follows with little mental effort. Yet sometimes habits take hold when they are not useful” (Glasofer and Steinglass). In the article, “Disrupting the habits of Anorexia,” Glasofer and Steinglass outline the idea that routines and habits result in certain destructive behaviors and disorders. The article furthers that breaking the barrier between these old routines allows an altercation in the way we form new habits. Glasofer and Steinglass suggest a “habit-reversal therapy,” through which patients look for cues in their behavior that could lead
to the habit. Then, patients work to create hindrances to repress the habit. Their method has been proven successful in the case of Jane, a diagnosed anorexic women mentioned in the article as well as many others in Glasofer and Steinglass’ intervention program REACH. This approach, however, is not reserved for patients battling anorexia nervosa. Through personal experience, the habit-reversal program yields fruitful results when battling everyday habits such as obsessively checking social media. The cure for detrimental practices and behavior is to identify, eliminate, and learn from our habits. Habits make up almost all the actions we take throughout the day.
From brushing our teeth before or after breakfast to double checking the gearshift twice before pulling out of the driveway, habits revolve around our actions and decisions. The general concept of “habit” can simply be categorized into two areas: positive habits and negative habits. Positive habits include those that result in good test scores such as routine, study habits. Negative habits may lead to more detrimental consequences such as alcohol addiction due to lack of temperance or obesity due to ignorance of nutrition. Observation of personal habits have lead to the analyzation of the “chain of action” Glasofer and Steinglass mention in their article. For example, a positive personal habit would include the determination to drink at least eight glasses of water per day. The cue for this habit is initiated in the morning when a glass of water seems necessary after consuming coffee. All the decisions and actions we take as the progresses is the result of the familiarity of our
habits. Negative habits are capable of having dire consequences in multiple, if not one, ways. Referring to personal experience, a particularly challenging habit to eradicate was the necessity to obsessively check social media through an iPhone. The cue started from being given a smart phone at the tender, immature age of twelve. As excitement took over, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, and more were downloaded on the phone and more hours beyond reasonable were spent updating profiles, uploading posts of irrelevant nature, and checking back constantly on followers. Repercussions included sleep deprivation, difficulty in studies, and irritability. The first step taken was realizing and understanding the effect of being obsessed with social media personally had. Next, as the “habit-reversing” therapy suggests, hindrances were created to obliterate the continuation means of the negative habit. Once grades, along with attitude, deteriorated, the ability to access social media became difficult through personal efforts of deleting such applications from the iPhone. Replacing the action of checking social media constantly, the time spent on scrolling through twitter was devoted to reading ahead in class material and acquiring a new passion: reading. Although the discussed example derived from personal experience of battling the effects of social media retains as minor compared to other dangerous habits, the steps to obliterate those negative habits are pervasive in any situation. The final step in eradicating an unfavorable habit is to learn from the experience of forming and tearing down the habit.
Personally, a lesson derived from the consequences of social media is to allow the identification process to take place and to accept the dilemma at hand. Parallel to Jane’s situation, after accepting that such habits were causing destruction, the principle learned is that breaking the routine requires a process. Any habit may seem impossible to break from commonplace routine, however, through the process of recognizing and reverting old habits, a cured life can be accessed by
anyone.