Free Yourself from the Burden of Habits and Addictive Behaviour

A habit can is something that develops as time moves forward. Now, there are good habits. There are as well habits that are unhelpful, unhealthy possibly harmful.
The good ones can benefit your body and mind, such as exercising, a healthy diet as well as sleeping adequately. The bad ones are the ones we persistently do even if we don’t want to. Examples are hair plucking, biting nails, teeth grinding, and stuttering. All these undesired habits can pose a significant challenge to overcome. What’s worse is that the further you do them, the more they become persistent to the mind.
A habit can be understood as an automatic reaction or response to a specific stimulus. It is basically, a reflex. What may bring about the habit are restlessness, unease, boredom, troubled emotions, and a mild to a moderate feeling of stress or anxiety. It can also be triggered by deep-seated dissatisfaction in some aspect of our lives. Habits’ roots lie in the desire to feel positive after stress triggering factors. It addresses the feeling of stress or anxiety and appears to calm a person ( for a brief moment). Nonetheless, it is a way for people to lower their stress levels but does it work in the long run? That often creates more disturbances than relief.

What’s the Difference between Addiction and Habit ?

The idea of having an addiction is somehow just a question of Substance Addiction. It’s is quite limiting to see the problem as purely biological or physiological. It is empowering to understand it as a habit, something that is happening in response to certain conditions, considering the behavioural component of addiction. Considering just the biological aspect is losing the chance to address why the habit appears and has maintained over time. And what thoughts, feelings, triggers that have contributed to reinforcing the conditioned reflexes. In line with this, from the behavioural aspect, addictions are also like habits.
Addiction and unhealthy habits can be addressed with the help of Cognitive Behavioral Hypnotherapy, mindfulness, and relaxation.

Habits like nail biting or hair pulling can go away through habit reversal training.
Luckily, some techniques are effective in treating these bad behaviors. One of those techniques is the Habit Reversal Training (HBT). It breaks the vicious cycle by replacing bad habits with counter-habits or competing responses. This approach is highly effective. An average of 90% habit frequency reduction is noted after only a two-hour session. Applying hypnotherapy strengthens the outcome and prevent the relapse.

The approach in the program is to replace bad habits with positive ones. By positive habits, it means replacing them with muscle relaxation and developing and acceptance towards certain emotions. If one has a calm mind and can ease the muscles and body at will, the bad habits will not serve you anymore, rendering it meaningless. Muscle relaxation helps because it lowers reflex responses.

SPOT / STOP/ SWITCH

Every “bad” habit and addictive behavior has its triggers. The path to curbing these problems starts with figuring out what are these triggers. Once it is found out, Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Techniques helps to figure out negative thought patterns and the “early warning signs” (EWS). It’s important because you need to spot those signs to be able to stop your behaviour. Coping strategies are then taught to switch your action to a more healthy one. These will open up choices that will trace these thoughts with a positive and healthy mindset.
Moreover, all the way hypnotherapy techniques will reinforce your progress and maintain them in the long term.

The Multi-component or the Toolbox Approach to treat addictions.
A multi-component approach puts together different techniques coherently within a single program to alter your habits and prevent them from coming back.

A behaviour treatment programme can solve excessive eating, drinking, smoking.

Smoking

Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy is highly effective against addiction to smoking, and the Smoking Cessation Program is proven to be very effective for the people who wanted to quit smoking for good.

What’s more? Hypnotherapy can also help to solve a wide range of addictions as a component of some addiction treatments, especially when the person is very like to have a relapse. Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy works by tackling all those thoughts and emotions of the patient in those cases where cravings, impulses, and low self-esteem are persistent.

Overuse of alcohol or drug

Alcohol, recreational drugs, pain killers, shopping, or gambling dependence all bring their harmful effects on all aspects of life, physical, emotional, social…
It is not harmful to have an occasional sip from a glass of wine. What’s problematic is when you consume a bottle just about every day, or worse. Alcoholism is not happening overnight. A heavy or binge drinker is very likely to become dependent or addicted to alcohol if they pursue their behaviour.

Eating disorders

Hypnotherapy can be applied to food-related issues. It can be either for weight loss, food cravings as sugar and overeating in moments of stress with the use of “comfort food”. Bad eating habits are more widespread than we think it is.

Those kinds of problems can be approached like other negative habits problems. However, these addiction issues are closely tied to a person’s physical health as the dependency can manifest in the body. Hence, the program has to be lead in coordination with other relevant professional support available.

How long is the treatment for addictive behaviour?

It depends! The severity of the condition, and also the willingness to change are essentials factors. For that reason, results vary from people to people. That is said, around four to six sessions usually address it.

What’s the best way to prevent relapse?

Issues with possible relapse will always be around. All they need is to keep positive habits, a more precise understanding of their cognitions and behaviour as efficient and adaptive coping skills. Reinforcing the client’s confidence in his competency to cope and to stick to his new routine will help avoid the chance of relapse.
Here’s why cognitive behavioural techniques can significantly assist people that have already chosen to kick out their old and bad behaviors to maintain this decision in the future.