How I Gave Up Bad Habits by Cutting Off the Person They Were Tied To

 

For a long time, I thought my bad habits were my problem.

Smoking.

Drinking.

Escaping in whatever way I could.

What I eventually realised is this: those habits didn’t come from nowhere. They were survival tools tied to a specific person and a specific environment.

Once I understood that, giving them up became possible.

When control is taken away, habits become coping

When I was younger, my mother was emotionally non-existent.

I was ignored most of the time.

And when I was noticed, it was usually negative:

• Put-downs
• “You can’t do this”
• “You can’t do that”
• Constant control

There was no warmth, no encouragement, no safety.

As a child, you don’t have power.

You don’t have choice.

You don’t have escape.

You only have coping.

Harmful coping doesn’t start because you’re weak

At my lowest point, I tried to end my life. I survived.

After that, smoking became my way of coping.

Not because I wanted to self-destruct — but because it gave me a sense of control and relief when nothing else did.

That’s an important distinction.

Most “bad habits” aren’t about recklessness.

They’re about regulation.

Why habits stay as long as the trigger stays

Here’s the part that changed everything for me:

My habits were attached to a person.

Smoking wasn’t random.

Drinking wasn’t random.

They were responses to being around someone who:

• Controlled me
• Invalidated me
• Made me anxious
• Took away my autonomy

As long as that person was in my life, the habit had a job to do.

Blocking the person without blocking the habit doesn’t work

This is where most people get stuck.

They distance themselves from the toxic person…

But keep the habit that was created because of that person.

So the body stays in the same pattern.

For me, real change only happened when I did both:

1. I blocked the person emotionally and physically
2. I let go of the habit that existed to survive them

Once the trigger was gone, the habit no longer had a purpose.

This applies to smoking, drinking, and more

For example:

• Smoking tied to anxiety around a narcissistic parent
• Drinking tied to socialising with controlling or unsafe people
• Overeating tied to certain environments
• Doom-scrolling tied to emotional neglect

If the habit only shows up around a specific person or situation, that’s your clue.

The habit isn’t the root.

It’s the adaptation.

Why this helps mental health

When you remove both:

• The harmful person or environment
• The coping behaviour tied to it

Your nervous system finally gets the message:

“I’m safe now. I don’t need this anymore.”

That’s when habits fall away naturally — not through punishment or willpower, but through irrelevance.

The key insight

If you want to give up a bad habit, ask yourself:

• Who did this habit help me survive?
• What situation does it belong to?
• Does it still serve me now?

Sometimes the most powerful form of self-care isn’t adding something new —

it’s deleting what created the need in the first place.

Final word

Bad habits aren’t moral failures.

They’re messages.

And when you listen to what they’re protecting you from, you can finally let them go — without replacing them with shame.