THE HUMAN CONDITION / BREAKING BAD HABITS : Resolved: A New You
You’re bloated from pigging out on potato chips, so you light up a Camel to curb your appetite.
Feeling guilty because you know you should quit smoking, you nibble your nails instead. You decide it’s better to chew gum, but you’re so nervous that you constantly pop it. When someone complains, you reach for the raw chocolate-chip cookie dough.
And so on.
When New Year’s Eve rolled around, you resolved to make a new start. You vowed to eat sensibly, give up smoking, leave your nails alone and quit blowing bubbles.
A few days into the new year-- surprise!-- you’re right back where you started.
Why are bad habits so hard to break? Can we ever really put them behind us?
To start with, realize that habits are, by definition, persistent. If it were easy to change these behaviors, they wouldn’t be habits.
Be realistic, suggests Audrey Beslow, an Alhambra-based counselor and author who in 1989 published the book “Change Your Bad Habits for Good!”
“Any habit is going to take time (to break)--that’s the problem with New Year’s resolutions,” she says. “You can only do one of those at a time.”
Next, Beslow says, we must take a good, long look at ourselves: Willpower alone seldom suffices when it comes to kicking a habit.
“It really is becoming aware of yourself and your inner self and what you really want,” she says. “A lot of times we think we want to change things, but we don’t really.”
Beslow urges people to apply the principles of cognitive therapy, identifying negative “automatic” thoughts that contribute to a poor self-image.
“So many times,” she says, “the thoughts are things you’ve heard from your childhood--’You’re dumb,’ ‘You’re stupid’--and we keep repeating them to ourselves when we’re adults.”
Internalizing what they heard as children, many people tell themselves that they “should” or “ought to” do something, but few people are eager to undertake a task they think is obligatory.
“Deep down, if we say ‘ought to,’ it’s coming from someone else,” Beslow says. “If it’s really from us, we say, ‘I want to.’ ”
There are many approaches for dealing with bad habits. Here are suggestions for banishing a few of the vices typically on the list of New Year’s Eve resolutions:
* Overeating. Nutritionists recommend adjusting the diet to include more complex carbohydrates and fiber and less fat, as well as getting plenty of exercise.
On the behavioral side, try to develop greater awareness of how you’re feeling during the times you’re tempted to binge, and learn more skillful means of dealing with those emotions.
* Smoking. Smoking is both physiologically addictive and habit-forming. Smoke-ending methods that focus solely on eliminating the craving for nicotine, including the nicotine patch and nicotine gum, are much more effective when coupled with behavioral techniques and peer group support.
Billie Dytzel, executive director of the American Lung Assn. of New Mexico, says her organization offers both 20-day and seven-week versions of a behavioral modification program. Some tips: Drink lots of water, shower frequently, keep your hands occupied, and keep track of each time you smoke. She also recommends putting a sum of money equivalent to the price of a pack of cigarettes in a jar each time you succeed in not smoking a pack. You reward yourself by treating yourself to a present, she says. Don’t be discouraged should you fall from grace, she adds: “A lot of people have to try several different times before they give up smoking.”
* Nail-biting. Chewing your fingernails may not pose the same health hazard as smoking, but it’s nearly as difficult to quit, according to Kelly Reynolds, a manicurist at Albuquerque’s Pampered Hands Inc.
She sees nail-biters every day, most of them women in their late 30s or early 40s who are ashamed of their habit. “There’s very few things you can do to make a nail-biter stop biting her nails,” she says. “It’s just like hangovers. How many people do you know who stop drinking just because they had a hangover?”
Reynolds, who attributes the habit to “nervousness and an oral fixation,” says many of her clients started chewing their nails after they had children because parenting “raised their stress level.”
A first step is to try applying a nail polish formulated to taste awful. That deters some people, but for hard-core nail-biters, Reynolds suggests asking a manicurist to sculpt artificial nails from acrylic. The acrylic nail is harder to bite through and can be added to as the underlying natural nail lengthens. By the time the nails grow out completely, the client often is cured of the habit, she says.
* Gum-popping. Strictly speaking, making smacking noises with your Bazooka is a problem only if those around you object. Nine times out of 10, they will. It’s really a question of good manners, which Audrey Beslow describes as “social things that smooth the way for relationships. The people who don’t learn them don’t know why (others are) repulsed.”
This may not make sense to you if you were raised by wolves, but there’s no harm in giving good manners a try.
Now, so much for the unsolicited advice. It may well be that you’ve already defaulted on the solemn pledge you took on New Year’s Eve (pass the Twinkies, please).
If so, there’s always next year.