For better or for worse, we are indeed creatures of habit. Our psyches like habitual behaviors because they require a lot less of our resources. There’s no need for the conscious brain to reprocess the same experiences over and over again and tell us how to handle them. Imagine if you had to learn the gear shift of a car every time you drove? Instead, the repeated activity starts to become more of a visceral reaction rather than a response that is chosen. When the habits are things like keeping your hands out of fire and brushing your teeth everyday, this mechanism is awesome! Unfortunately, it’s way less handy when we have learned distorted or defensive behaviors from experiences that were not so pleasant.