The question was asked in seminar " Why do people continue with behaviors that are bad for them?"
There exists in us times of cognitive dissonance. For example people that smoke. There is a lot of data that tells you it causes heart disease, cancer, emphasima, etc. yet people still smoke. They know smoking is bad but in their mind they are a good person. A good person does not do bad things. This is the mental fight that goes on so we justify our smoking by saying things like: I exercise, I only smoke one pack a day, I could quit if I wanted to and I only smoke outside. We lessen the internal fight and so continue the behavior. This is also why we are a fat and sugar, french fry nation, always on a diet. It takes a real cognative shift to change our misregulated behaviors. I have been on a one week cleanse and keep sugar, dairy, bread and red meat out of my diet. My sugar craving has gone down, I have more energy that is constant and not sugar/caffine driven spikes and feel better. This is why it is important that the person is ready to change their behavior for something like quitting smoking to work. If it is someone else's plan for you it usually don't work.
I could also go into the need for a level of emotional intelligence that Daniel Goldman in his book "Emotional Intelligence" explains as necessary for this process to work. We start out with our lizard brain that gives us fight or flight. Latter as we mature our frontal brain filters the automatic reflexes of our amygdala, lizard brain. If a person has not been taught how to stop and not just fly off the handle and react, misregulation happens. In our relationships this is what allows us to have positive social engagement. There is a course here at Evergreeen, "Transforming Relationships" that teaches under the Imago Therapy umbrella and sets this process in motion.
