Mindfulness of Habituation

Have you ever noticed that something that once brought you great joy now seems kind of meh? Ever wonder why people stay way too long in bad relationships or toxic work environments even when it seems like nothing should be holding them back from making a change? Habituation may hold the keys and mindfulness can help unlock the doors to needed change.

There are many consequences of developing a mindfulness practice that have been powerful for me. One is that it has allowed me to be less reactive in certain situations. Another is that it has enabled me to be more responsive. Being more aware of what is present as it is arising, I have more agency in how I will work with it.

Habituation is our inborn ability to get used to things that repeat. The experiences that are constant or show up over and over in our lives tend to blend into the background mostly unnoticed. We share this tendency with most living things. The ability to habituate is adaptive because we have a limited capacity for attention. If we had to pay attention to everything in our field of experience we’d be scattered and exhausted. Also, some things aren’t within our power to change – so it’s a good thing that we can adapt to them.

Habituation can become a problem when our life circumstances or cultural norms require us to live with a lot of sameness and we:

fall into autopilot, become apathetic, and fail to heed warning signals
lose appreciation for the good (gratitude, joy, wonder, awe)
become increasingly inflexible, rigid, lacking in curiosity

One interpretation of Buddhist philosophy is that unexamined habituation to pleasure and subsequent grasping after more is a cause of suffering. Our ignorance of this pattern is what keeps us locked into a “hedonic treadmill” of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. When we are mindful of habituation we can work with it rather than falling into this trap. So, how do we work with it?

Know Thyself

One tool we have at our disposal is understanding our own habits and patterns. Mindfulness can help us know ourselves better. With practice we learn to observe our moment by moment thoughts, feelings, sensations and actions with a kind objectivity that allows for insight into habitual ways of being. This provides us with the information we need to make wiser choices about how we respond to the joys and challenges of life.

I’ve come to discover I’m a relatively slow habituator. I can eat the same foods, visit the same places, do the same activities, and listen to the same songs over and over, without getting bored or apathetic. At the same time, I’m not particularly sensitive or reactive so I tend to be fairly abiding. This is neither good nor bad in and of itself, but depends on each situation. For example, getting out of my comfort zone and trying new things keeps my variety loving friends and family happier and makes me more flexible and creative. Also, I’ve come to realize that in some situations, being less abiding and setting better boundaries makes for better relationships and experiences in the long run.

You might take some time to reflect upon your style of habituation and reactivity. What are some of the advantages and pitfalls of being a slower or faster habituator and how might sensitivity and reactivity moderate these differences?

Research indicates fast habituators tend to adapt more quickly to changing situations. Slow habituators take longer to adapt, but they tend to be more creative. Some speculate this is because information remains in mind longer, so it’s available for greater experimentation. Slow habituators who are highly sensitive/reactive may really suffer in aversive situations they cannot change.

Fast habituators are at risk of getting used to things that really need to be changed. They can adapt to a toxic work environment or an abusive relationship rather than taking the action they need to protect themselves. We can take advantage of our ability to habituate to one another’s behavior through uplifting and celebrating those rare few who refuse to conform to society’s harms. These are the activists, whistleblowers and informants who call out wrongdoing. Their persistence in going against the stream triggers dishabituation in others. This is why they are seen as dangerous to those they call out and vilified or even completely silenced through oppression.

Avoid the Trap

Next we have to remember that pleasure isn’t always good though it feels good and discomfort isn’t always bad even though it feels bad. Change, growth, and the effort of meeting needs can be uncomfortable in the short-term, but quite beneficial in the longer term. Staying in our comfort zone or over-indulging can prevent us from thriving and even from surviving.

Researchers have found that mindfulness and meditation help to counter habituation. This may be because when we practice mindfulness, we tend to be more open to what is happening inside and around us, moment by moment. So, we become less lulled by repetition. Accordingly, one study found that intensive mindfulness practice reduced habituation of the startle reflex to repeated sounds (Antonova, Chadwick, & Kumari, 2015). Another reason may be that when we practice mindfulness we are attuning to direct experience rather than working from memories, assumptions, biases, and expectations. A 2012 study by Greenberg, Reiner, & Meiran showed that mindfulness practice appears to increase our openness to new ideas due to reduced interference of “rigid and repetitive thought patterns formed through experience”.

Working with habituation requires that we recognize the difference between feeling and knowing. Habituation happens at the feeling level. With repetition our emotional and physiological response to a stimulus decreases even if we intellectually know how we should be feeling or how we want to be feeling. Fortunately there are many ways we can intentionally impact the process of habituation.

We can dishabituate to the good stuff in our lives so that we can keep appreciating it:

As psychologist Rick Hanson says, we can learn to savor the good rather than taking it for granted.
We can break the good stuff up by consuming it in smaller doses, not taking more than we need, taking frequent breaks from it, and interspersing it with a variety of other things.
We can create opportunities for lifelong learning. Learning is changing your mind. It provides a regular dose of relatively low risk, hassle-free change and we can’t habituate to change.
Be of service. Research indicates that we habituate much more slowly to the joy of giving and doing meaningful things for others than doing nice things for ourselves.
Try a mental subtraction practice which helps refresh a sense of gratitude for the good in our lives.

We can also habituate to the non-negotiable aversive stuff that we simply have to do:

Do what is aversive in one dose rather than taking breaks. Research indicates breaks from unpleasant experiences actually make us suffer more. This means avoidance and procrastination can actually make our suffering worse.
Take frequent wise or calculated risks. Over time our risk-aversion will decrease.

Finally, there are ways to dishabituate to the bad stuff that we don’t want to or really shouldn’t get used to:

Call out the bad stuff when its still small. This way we don’t become increasingly desensitized to it and wind up in a much worse situation down the line.
Don’t let your own small stuff slide. Maintain integrity by preventing the slippery slope from sliding into an avalanche of regret.
Stem the tide of complacency (risk habituation). Reinforce safe behavior and best practices in high risk situations and provide frequent reminders of what’s at stake if you make a crucial mistake.

Mindfulness can help us take a step back, diversify, and use the imagination. What might it be like to view ourselves, our culture, beliefs, values, norms and contexts from a new perspective? What if things were otherwise? When we see other ways of living, being, working, and relating, this can help us see ourselves and our situation with fresh eyes. Sometimes we don’t realize a change is needed until we step outside of a situation and see it with a little more objectivity. This is one of the many gifts of practice.

The Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness offers a courses on savoring and mindfulness for habit change from time to time. Check our offerings page to see what we have upcoming.

The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget. ~Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living