About the power of habit

We humans are slaves to habit. And unfortunately, we will choose the habit, at the expense of the things that are good for us. If we are used to mingle love with violence, we will seek violence in love. If we have become accustomed to love through indifference, we will seek indifference.

The child’s brain absorbs from a young age, ways of being in the world and of life, which he later considers to be unique and univocal. He observes his parents and because in the first years of his life, parents are his only universe, he considers that the way his parents relate to life and to others, are the only ways in which he can be in this world. He learns to manage his frustrations, to relate to work and effort, to create and maintain relationships with others, just like his parents do.

At the neural level, all this means well-formed connections in the brain, which will lead the child to the same type of partners, the same type of relationships, the same way of being in life and in the world. Although all these relationship models will sooner or later lead to suffering, the child, who has become young and then adult, will choose suffering at the expense of liberation and the known at the expense of the new.

In the therapy office we learn to distinguish between ordinary and good, between known and useful. The client, with the help of the psychotherapist, sees his patterns created out of habit, the ways in which they cause him suffering and can decide to free himself from them, stepping into the unknown and starting the real growth process.