Each Monday this series of articles will feature pain management techniques to help you decrease and cope with pain.  It’s your at-home pain management class!

How are you doing with your new habit?  If you’re trying to practice pain managements skills regularly, how are you doing with that?

Let’s take a break from pain today, and I’ll share an example of the process of habit change.  I’ve always been a nail biter and I play with my nails.  I wanted to try to tackle stopping that habit – though it’s daunting to try to change a life-time habit!

In applying habit-change theory, I started in the preparation stage.  In this stage, you develop a plan to change your habit, figure out what might get in the way of sticking with your change, and how to best set things up to be successful with changing your habit.

My plan:

1. Stop cold-turkey.
2. I picked February 1 as the date to start.
3. I would use several ways to distract myself from biting, including holding something in my hands, picking at an eraser instead (a brilliant suggestion from a manicurist), or tying a string in knots to give myself something to do with my hands.
4. I told a colleague at work about my goal and asked if he would give me a signal if he noticed me biting my nails.
5. I planned to use mindfulness to observe how strong the urges were to bite, and then be able to choose what behavior (bite or not bite) to do.

How did it go?

In other words, what was the action stage like?  (In the action stage, you put your plan into practice – jumping in to try your new behavior.  Some things will work well and some won’t.  It’s a time to get lots of experience with how things go, so you can fine-tune your habit-change plan.)

The first week, my motivation was high.  In meetings, I held a pencil as a distraction and played with an eraser as a substitute behavior, and this worked well.  However, I still bit my nails while watching TV and driving.  I noticed that the urges to bite were higher on days that were stressful.  After a week, my motivation was lower.

How to learn from your experience and revise your plan:

So some things went well in my plan and some things needed work.  I thought having alternate behaviors was very helpful.  I learned that my motivation would wax and wane, and I had to be prepared to try something different when it was low.

What revisions did I make in my plan?

1. Cold turkey was too hard.  I decided to try the step-wise approach instead.  For February, I decided to just stop playing with my nails in specific meetings at work.  For March, my goal is to stop during all meeting.  Then in April, my goal will be to add stopping while watching TV.

I’m changing first in situations that are easier, and will work up to harder ones.  That will give me some practice, as well as some success, before I tackle the hardest situations.

2. I have to plan ahead, before I start playing with my nails.  It’s easier to stop before rather than try to get myself to stop after starting.  So at the times when I know I’m prone to play with my nails, I have to use a distracting behavior before I start.

One step at a time!  Any thoughts about my experiment?  Any suggestions?  Want to share your journey?

Other articles in this series:

• How to change a habit, part 1
• How to change a habit, part 2
• Breathing exercises, part 1
• Relaxation exercise, part 1
• Breathing exercises, part 2
• Habit-helper websites
• How are you doing with your new habit?
• Try 1/2 a habit
• Visualization
• Feedback on changing habits, part 1
• Feedback on changing habits, part 2
• Guided imagery, part 1
• Guided imagery, part 2
• Stress management, part 1
• Stress management, part 2