Habit breaking
Edwin Ray Guthrie was a behaviorist who made most of his work and research on matters concerning habit breaking. According to Edwin Ray Guthrie, a habit is a type of response that is connected to a variety of stimuli that causes the pattern to happen more times to a wide range of things. According to Guthrie, there are three ways in which a habit can be broken including the threshold method, the fatigue method and the incompatible method.
One of my bad habits is stress eating. Stress eating is a habit that involves the use of food to help an individual feel good or happy when they are emotional. It is also known as emotional eating. The pattern consists of an event that results in someone feeling upset, angry, or sad. After this, one gets an overwhelming urge to eat, and then there is the aspect of overeating; eating more than one should eat, and then one is left with a guilty feeling for overeating. Some of the triggers of cues for the strength of this habit are stressful days, loneliness, stress, boredom, or a sense of emptiness, social influences, or even childhood habits.
Guthrie explained that there are three ways of breaking a bad habit, which include: threshold method, the fatigue method, and the incompatible method.
The threshold method involves the introduction of a stimulus that is associated with the habitat, a level that is so weak that it does not provoke the response. Moreover, it can also mean the introduction of the stimulus at weak strengths that it will not cause the reaction. After this, the power of the stimulus can be gradually increased, but be careful that the resistance is below the threshold of the response. According to Guthrie, with this method, the larger the number of stimuli that creates the reaction, the stronger the habit. In this method, when breaking the stress, the eating pattern is associated with things like stress, loneliness, sadness, and many others. I breaking this habit, the stimulus presented has to be weak that the undesired response does not take place. For instance, placing the food in an unfavorable place that you dislike like the bathroom to prevent stress eating habits. In this case, the stimuli the snack is in the toilet are said to be below the threshold for the responses if stress eating. Gradually the incentive is increased in strength like having meals in the bathroom every time one is alone or bored or stressed and also putting the food in places you so much not dislike like the store which is not disliked but not favorable. Repeated experiences of this will weaken the stimuli and raise the threshold.
The fatigue method involves the constant repetition of the stimulus until the subject does not respond to their mechanical stimulus. In this case, one can be exposed to so much stress or boredom nonstop until they become exhausted with stress eating. The specific triggers lose their strength in stimulating the bad habit. The fatigue of consumption will, therefore, change the behavior of stress eating.
The incompatible response, on the other hand, involves the paring of the causal habitual behavior with another stimulus that triggers a reaction that is different from the habit that one wants to get rid of. In this case, stress eater can try exercise when they are bored, annoyed, or bored. This way, they cannot eat and exercise at the same time, the fore they will choose the desired response of exercise to stress than eating. Stress eating and exercise are incompatible with each other, and the friction leads to the acceptance of the desired behavior of not stress-eating.
Sidetracking is the avoidance of the cues that cause undesired or bad habits. Sidetracking can be used by ensuring that one does not concentrate on the triggers of a bad addiction. This means that a stress eater has to avoid stress, boredom, and getting annoyed, and this way, stress eating will not be an issue. This method is, however, not very useful since not all cues can be avoided. Some signals can be internal, which makes it hard to avoid them.