how do you break bad habits?

Question

I have a friend who has a bad habit (dont know why, but she dosnt want to tell what it is) Any generaal advice on habit breaking? Thank you!

Answer 1

Find something else to replace the bad habit. Also, mild aversion therapy works well. This would be something as simple as wearing a rubber band around your wrist and snapping the wrist with the rubber band every time you want to indulge in the bad habit.

Answer 2

Well it depends on what type of habit. For example to quit smoking I used to wear sweaters even in the summer, as I don't smoke when I feel hot. My general advice is to keep yourself occupated. That way you only focus at that thing. For eample: if someone has the habit of biting his/her nails, they will tell you that they never bite them when working hard on something. Working hard may not be work itself, it may be a sport or anything which takes most of your concentration. If you don't do the thing for some time (month - 3 months), you will probably not do it again, if you really don't want to do it.

Answer 3

People with addictive personalities never really break habits they just kind of morph into something else. I suggest you introduce her to Yahoo Answers. It is prolly the lesser of the two evils and it will give you time to think of a strategy to eventually break this bad habit.

Answer 4

people don't "break" habits, we replace them with something else. So my advice is to chose a healthier alternative to what ever habit you want to get rid of. if it is smoking, nail biting, or eating she could chew gum. Also what works for me is to keep myself busy, or go for a walk, get some kind of exercise until the "need" to do the bad habit fades.

Answer 5

Well it's going to be hard to answer, considering I don't know what the habit is. :)

What I do to break habits are to simply don't do it for a certain amount of time, and keep expanding that time period. And reward yourself! Like if I bite my nails, I'll say to myself "If I don't bite my nails for the football game, then I can have alittle piece of chocolate or cook myself something good."

Answer 6

I broke a bad habit in a weird way. I used to bite my nails a lot and then one day I decided to stop and I did. I am serious, it was that easy

Answer 7

The only way to stop a bad habit is to deliberately decide to stop it.
For instance, if "you" have the terrible habit of picking your nose, make a deliberate effort to restrain yourself any time that urge arises.
Cold turkey is the best way.

Answer 8

Yes, I bit my nails for a long time. Then I got braces and it was hard to bite my nails. Now they're off and I don't bite them anymore. It was like within the first week of that I broke the habit. :)

Answer 9

A secrete bad habit? Hmmm, sounds interesting. What could it be? Maybe she hunts endangered wildlife and hangs their heads on a mantle.

Answer 10

It really depends on the habit. cant tell you much without more info, sorry.
(some habits, such as smoking or drinking too much, can get help professionally)
she can try hypnotism