This is the case with all addictions: if you don’t act on your habit, you feel anxious, which makes you want to act on the habit even more. And if you do yield to the habit, it just causes more stress later on, which retriggers the habit. It’s easy to see how we get stuck in a cycle—how it can feel impossible to break out of. But it’s not impossible. To get rid of a destructive coping habit, you can’t just stop doing it, because then you’re left with the stress. Instead, you have to replace it with another habit.
