Self-Regulation and Addiction
What is the connection between self-regulation, addiction, and bad habits?
The number one reason that prevents many people from giving up a bad habit is not dealing with the right underlying cause.
If a symptom such as addiction was treated instead of the root cause, then another symptom will quickly replace it.
The lack of proper Self-regulation skills is one of the biggest root causes of addictions and bad habits.
The connection between self-regulation, addictions, and bad habits
A person with self-regulation problems is the one who can hardly control his short-term impulses for the sake of attaining a longer-term goal. For example, if the ultimate goal for the person were to lose weight, then lack of self-regulation would force him to eat whenever he shouldn’t.
To get over any addiction caused by a self-regulation problem, you must first deal with the self-regulation problem.
The authoritarian parenting style, which lacks flexibility, prevents the child from developing his own self-regulation abilities.
This means that the way we raise children could turn them into addicts when they grow up!!
Quitting addiction by improving your self-regulation skills
One of the good things that can help you increase your self-regulation abilities is setting goals and achieving them. The goals don’t have to be related to addiction because their main aim would be to increase your self-regulation ability so that you can use this ability to control addiction later on.
It won’t take a day or two to develop proper self-regulation as you are trying to build something that you lacked for years, but with patience and persistence, it will be possible.
Trying to quit a certain addiction without dealing with your poor self-regulation if it was the underlying cause will prevent you from quitting that bad habit for sure.
