HABITS AND COMPULSIONS

A habit is a practice which we feel an inner urge to carry out but which urges, if we resisted it repeatedly, would diminish after a time and disappear. To say that playing golf is habit, or that gesticulating when one talks is a habit, is to say that by resisting the inclination toward the activity, we could eventually break its grip on us. In contrast, we can’t rid ourselves of a compulsion simply by resisting it. Though we can sometimes reduce compulsive urges this way, they return to torment us. Months, and sometimes years, after we think we’ve defeated our compulsion by resisting it, we feel it suddenly welling up in us again, and we must battle as desperately as before if we are to resist it. If we manage to subdue the impulse successfully this time, we are likely to suffer from severe anxiety or form other serious symptoms.