Quitting a habit

You are tired of the bargain you make with the habit every evening, and a quiet sentence is not the same thing as a cure.

The bargain you are tired of making

The habit has a polite voice. It says later, or only this once, or you have had a long day and the long day deserves it. Sometimes it is the late cigarette, the third glass, the phone in the bed, or the sharp reply. A woman near seventy may be weary of signing the bargain. A younger woman may feel the habit is the only ceremony her evening has. Both are speaking of something they do with their own hands. That limit matters, and we set it down before any talk of method.

This page will not rank your habit against anyone else’s, and it will not shame you into a stricter personality. What we will offer is education: how a person might speak to herself, on purpose, about a change she has already chosen while she was calm. We will not offer a cure. We will not offer a guarantee. If a page tells you the habit must yield, it is selling a story. Nothing here is for sale, including freedom.

Not a treatment, and not a secret ending

If the habit is drink, or a drug, or anything a clinician is already helping you with, do not treat this essay as a plan for stopping. Stopping some things suddenly can be dangerous, and this house will not give you a schedule, a dose, or a set of private rules for that danger. Speak with a clinician. If a medicine has been prescribed — an antidepressant, or any other medicine — do not stop it, skip it, or change it because a quiet hour made you feel briefly like a new woman. Resoluteness is not a prescriber. Questions belong in the clinic, in your own words. An ending decided alone, on the strength of a suggestion, is not self-mastery. It can be harm.

Self-hypnosis remains what it is in the rest of this house: focused attention and a suggestion you offer to yourself, by yourself. It is not a treatment programme. It is not safe to practise while you are driving, or while you are in charge of a machine, a pan of hot fat, or another person’s immediate safety. Sit down first. If you hoped to use a method on your husband so that he will quit, or drink less, or put the phone away, the answer is no. We say it as kindly as a firm sentence can be said. His habit is his to face. You may not slip a suggestion under the door of his mind and call it help.

A sentence offered to yourself alone

Choose the sentence in daylight, before the hour when the habit usually speaks. Let it be true. “When I want the old bargain, I will leave the room and fill a glass of water first.” “I can postpone, and postponing is allowed to count.” Do not choose a boast your evening-self will laugh at. Sit in a chair you can leave. Offer the sentence a few times, slowly, as if you respected the woman who has to keep it. Then open your eyes, feel your feet, and do one ordinary thing that belongs to the sentence: put the packet in a high cupboard, set the phone to charge in another room, rinse the glass that wants to become a second glass. The action is the point. The quiet is only a way of remembering which action you meant.

Come fully back before you return to the evening. If you feel strange, stop, look at the actual room, and do not practise again until you have spoken with someone qualified. If the habit is still there after the glass of water, you have not failed a sacred test. You have met a strong cue. You may leave again. You may also, on some nights, lose the argument. Losing is information. It is not a reason to add contempt, and it is not a reason to aim the practice at whoever shares the house.

The morning after, without a medal

In the morning, tell the truth in one line. You kept the sentence, or you did not, or you kept a smaller version of it. Write the line if writing keeps you honest. Do not build a medal, and do not build a gallows. Begin again when you are next calm enough to choose, not in the middle of the craving if the middle is a storm. Wait for the weather in which you still recognize your own voice.

If you want help beyond a page — because the habit is hurting you, or hurting the house, or because you cannot tell anymore whether you are choosing — that wish for help is a dignified one. Take it to a clinician, not to a stronger metaphor. Education can keep you company on the way to that door. It cannot be the door. Your mind remains the only mind you are invited to address. You are still allowed a smaller promise, kept once, in a real room, with the lights on.

If you need care

Habits tangled with drink, drugs, or prescribed medicine need a clinician, not a private plan from an essay. Do not stop a prescribed medicine on your own. The longer essay is hypnosis. Definitions of hypnosis and self-hypnosis are in the glossary. Short answers are in the FAQ. Nothing here is for sale.