Why do I keep going back to old habits?
If you’ve done something hundreds of times - avoided, reached for food, alcohol or your phone to self-soothe, worked harder to get through difficult times, shut down, distracted yourself to cope - your brain knows that route.
When we’re trying to change something about ourselves, it’s helpful to remember that wanting to behave differently and having a well-practised pathway for behaving differently are not the same thing.
I often think of it like walking across a field.
If you’ve crossed the same field by the same route a thousand times, the grass has been flattened beneath your feet. You barely need to think about where you’re going anymore; your feet will carry you along the well-trodden path.
But if one day you decide you want to take a different route, you’re going to be walking through uncharted territory. At first it can feel uncertain, awkward and effortful. You can’t see where you’re going, you don’t yet trust the route, and it can be incredibly tempting to move back towards the path you already know.
That, in many ways, is what is happening in the brain when we try to change a habit.
The new way can feel clumsy, unfamiliar, and deeply uncomfortable for some time, not necessarily because it is wrong for you, or because you don’t really want to change, but because you haven’t walked it enough times yet - and your brain hasn’t strengthened that new pathway enough for it to become the easy, automatic route.
I made a little three-minute video about this, and about what repetition actually does in the brain.
Whatever new habit, response or way of living you’re trying to build at the moment, I hope you can give yourself a little patience with the awkwardness of it. New paths take some walking.
Warmly,
Matt
