Whether you’re at the point in your life where you are contemplating changing addictive behaviours or you’re already on your path to recovery, some concepts should be understood to ensure successful change. Hacking your own behaviour isn’t as simple as cutting pie. However, fine-tuning key parts of your life can result in long-lasting change.

Daily Routine

Having a general structure of what you need to do during the day can help organize your mind. This leaves less room for restlessness. Of course, life will happen and developing flexibility will be helpful. Ultimately, sticking to a daily routine will help you achieve your goals and stay on track. Consider adding some of our recommended activities to improve your well-being into your daily routine for added benefits!

Codependency

Codependency is defined as a circular relationship between one person who needs the other person, who in turn needs to be needed. Typically this individual has a poor sense of self and an inability to say no. This type of behaviour can be tied back into Erikson’s developmental theory of social psychology. Essentially, the individual wasn’t able to obtain a certain virtue during the associated stage of development. For example, not obtaining the virtue of fidelity can result in a lack of self-reliance. This can translate into people showing patterns of codependency. People with co-dependency may in turn have a hard time setting boundaries. Thus, learning how to set boundaries and enforce them can benefit the relationship. It can also support those trying to change their addictive behaviours or those in recovery.

Self Esteem

Going through rehab can support your personal development. Being surrounded by medical professionals, including psychologists, you will be able to dig deep and generate a framework to explore what is taking place for you on a psychological level. Going back to Erickson’s psychosocial model of development, self-esteem is a virtue that is established when a child learns how to assert their power and control in their world. If that doesn’t happen, then the foundation of confidence in decision-making is left unstable. This can lead to precarious decisions in life. 

Being able to pinpoint an experience in childhood where you felt guilty for something that wasn’t your fault or when you weren’t able to defend yourself is a good place to start. Once you’ve got this memory you can go inwards. Then, you can speak to the child version of yourself and provide the emotional support/love that child would have benefited from receiving. 

Nutrition

This is an important one but it doesn’t need to be complicated, just a bit of a learning curve. Fueling our bodies with adequate meals is necessary to have a balanced and sustainable recovery. Eating is a biological process that has been overridden by fast food chains and restaurants that don’t contribute to the betterment of society’s health. Taking the time to prepare home-cooked meals is a habit that will contribute to an optimized life.

Neuroplasticity

Imagine having a ball of play-doh in which you store every thought you had. Just like play-doh, the brain is super malleable and changes depending on the inputs it receives from our external sensory world, anything from our smell, touch, taste, vision, or sound. This concept is called neuroplasticity. The brain is constantly receiving information so it’s continuously adapting, all the while being a commanding officer for the rest of the body. For example, our digestive system and cardiovascular system are running without us having to even think about it, thanks to our brain. 

Understanding that our brain has a certain amount of plasticity gives us the advantage of knowing that we can change and hack our own behaviour. Instead of our mind using us, we are meant to use it, as a tool.

Healthy Relationships

If your brain has never perceived what a healthy balanced relationship looks like, it can be a challenging issue to navigate. A lot of people in recovery may have experienced childhood trauma. In turn, they might not have had the opportunity to see two parents maintain a healthy relationship. Since behaviour is learned, generating a healthy relationship takes some conscious effort, but it starts with yourself. Creating a healthy relationship with yourself can set you on your path to having a healthy relationship with someone else. This can be a friendship or a romantic relationship. Getting to know your strengths and weaknesses, your vulnerabilities and your joys create the foundation for a strong sense of self. 

Healthy relationships are monumental throughout the recovery process. Being aware of this and learning how to properly care for those who love you in your life will lead to lifelong reward.

How They Connect

So how do all of these factors contribute to understanding how to hack your addictive behaviours? Well, they all fall into each other. So by addressing one you’ll be addressing others. Let’s connect some dots.

Behaviour can be categorized as innate or learned. Innate behaviours take place because they are needed for survival. For example, a baby automatically knows how to breastfeed. Other behaviours such as codependency are learned behaviours based on an unstable childhood. For instance, children may adapt as they didn’t have their needs met. Codependency usually shows in people who have not obtained the virtue of self-esteem. This can later impair how the individual creates and maintains healthy relationships.

Since all of this is based on learned behaviour and because our brain is malleable due to neuroplasticity, we can adjust these behaviours. However, it takes consistent effort. Having a daily routine in place can start to re-adjust what our brain is used to. Within our daily routines, we can prioritize taking care of ourselves by making sure we’re properly nourished. By ingesting nourishing foods and providing self-care, we subconsciously build our self-esteem. Once self-care behavioural patterns are ingrained in our malleable brains, they become boundaries. For example, I will choose to not get drunk because I know how it will affect my eating patterns and then I’ll feel bad about myself. 

Having a deeper understanding of your conditioning plus the tools to help create the change you seek can lead you on the path to hacking your behaviour. It is a personal choice. Only you will know when you are ready. But if you think you can do it, you can and you will!