Stockholm Syndrome: The Trojan Horse We Willingly Embrace
What Is Stockholm Syndrome?
In 1973, a failed bank robbery occurred in Stockholm, Sweden. In a psychological twist, the hostages ultimately identified with the robbers and rejected assistance from authorities. The hostages eventually helped raise money for their captors' legal defense. The psychological mystery sparked a study into how powerlessness and trauma can warp our coping mechanisms into unlikely allegiances.
A Paradoxical Bond: Stockholm Syndrome doesn't seem to make sense -- hostages embracing their captors or victims defending their abusers. However, once you analyze the psychological relationship, you find one of psychology's most paradoxical phenomena: human beings form emotional attachments to those who have imprisoned and harmed them.
The Trojan Horse - An Invited Gift
"Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." -- The Aeneid by Virgil
During a fruitless 10-year siege of Troy, Greek soldiers finally devised a plan to gain access to the city. The Greeks appeared to offer a gesture of peace: a large wooden horse. But, hidden within the hollow belly were elite Greek warriors. The Trojans were deceived by what they interpreted as a gesture of surrender and dragged the offering inside their fortified walls. In one day, the Greeks accomplished what they couldn't over a decade.
Under the cloak of night, the Greek soldiers emerged from the horse, opened the gates, began a devastating surprise attack, and captured Troy from within. But how does this story apply to you?
Are You a Hostage to Habits?
Rough Day At Work Or With A Loved One? Have an extra cigarette, an extra hour mindlessly scrolling social media, an extra drink, or an extra candy bar to relieve stress. While each activity is often not aligned with your desirable health objectives, we find comfort and solace in these actions. In a way, these 'bad habits' frequently become our friends.
The Invited Trojan Horse: In everyday life, we encounter our version of the Trojan Horse when we succumb to bad habits. These habits start as minor diversions, whether it's smoking to ease stress, indulging in comfort food, or escaping into hours of scrolling social media. They promise relief or pleasure but soon entrench themselves deeply within our lives, becoming demanding captors of our well-being.
These habits develop a stronghold over us through continuous reinforcement. Each time we yield to a bad habit, we reinforce the behavior, and it becomes more entrenched. Over time, we find ourselves in a form of emotional captivity where we depend on these harmful habits for comfort and stress relief despite knowing their adverse effects on our health and well-being.
Side Note: Please understand that we're not talking about someone who has one cigarette once in a blue moon, or someone who has a Snickers bar once a week (although that is how many bad habits start). What we're discussing is the point when that one cigarette every now and then has become a pack-a-day habit, or what started as browsing TikTok for a few minutes in the morning has become a habit that consumes hours and hours of your time.
How Does Stockholm Syndrome Relate To Habits?
Stockholm Syndrome is about coping, comfort, and survival. Just as the bank hostages unexpectedly developed sympathetic bonds with their captors, despite the apparent dangers, we also can create similar relationships with our habits - especially our bad habits.
The Willing Emotional Captivity Of Habits: Our bad habits typically begin as simple survival coping actions and then often graduate to a comforting survival strategy.
It Often Starts Small: Our bad habits may begin as a cigarette to manage stress or to 'fit in' socially. We find solace in junk food to soothe our sadness. Endless scrolling through social media often helps to simply feel connected or to escape the pressures of real life.
Habit Bondage: These habits develop their hold over us because they provide immediate, albeit temporary, relief from discomfort. Over time, just as the bank hostages in Stockholm, we may come to not only sympathize with our captors but also desire the comfort they provide and actively seek bonding with habits we clearly understand are bad for our overall well-being.
Our brain soon insists on these 'bad habits' and ritualizes these actions as temporary comforts, providing much-needed, immediate relief.
Recognize - Strategize - Actualize - Realize, Then 'Be The Habit'
How to Break Free From Our Own Psychological 'Stockholm Syndrome': The first step is the easiest. The following steps, however, are more challenging.
The path to liberating ourselves from the grip of harmful habits mirrors the strategies used to treat Stockholm Syndrome:
Recognize - Acknowledgement: Acknowledge the habit and its impact. It is crucial to understand that what was once a source of temporary relief has now transformed into a significant barrier.
Strategize - Develop New Responses: Replace detrimental habits with beneficial ones. This strategic replacement is akin to reprogramming our responses to stress and triggers, much like redefining a relationship with a captor by understanding their tactics and motivations.
Actualize - Implement Changes: Take practical steps to enforce new habits. This might involve setting specific, measurable goals or changing one's environment to avoid triggers.
Realize - Reflect and Adapt: Continuously assess the effectiveness of new habits. Are they fulfilling the intended purpose without negative side effects? Adjust as necessary.
Be the Habit - Understanding the Captor: From a cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) perspective, bad habits manipulate our brain's reward system. They provide quick fixes for our emotional needs, much like a captor offering kindness to gain compliance. Recognizing this manipulation is vital for change. Each time we succumb to a bad habit, it reinforces the behavior, making it more entrenched. Just as a captor might offer kindness to manipulate a hostage, our habits intersperse moments of relief with long-term negative consequences, confusing our brain's understanding of pleasure versus pain.
Embody New Practices - A New You: Fully integrate the new, healthier habits into your identity. Just as one might work to internalize a sense of freedom after being held captive, so must we embrace our new habits as part of who we are.
The Stockholm Syndrome of Habits
The relationship between a hostage and their captor can often mirror the emotional dynamics we experience with our habits. There's a perverse comfort in the known, even if the known is detrimental to our well-being. This is where neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) offers insight. NLP examines how we code and produce our experience through language and internal introspection.
Click here for the next essay in the Recognize - Strategize - Actualize - Realize, Then 'Be The Habit' sequence.
Epilogue - 'To Serve Man'
One of my favorite episodes from the TV series The Twilight Zone is 'To Serve Man.' The story begins with human fear and uncertainty as an enigmatic alien race, the Kanamits, arrives on Earth with promises of peace and prosperity. The Kanamits share their advanced technology, quickly earning humanity's trust and gratitude as they solve energy crises and food shortages. The Kanamits later invite humans aboard their spacecraft to visit their planet.
However, not everything is as it seems.
The lead scientist goes up the ramp, and as the door closes, his assistant yells, "Mr. Chambers! Don't get on that ship! The rest of the book, To Serve Man... It's a cookbook!" This line is delivered just as Mr. Chambers is about to board the Kanamit ship, revealing the horrifying truth behind the aliens' true intentions for humanity.
The moral of the story is that some things that appear good for us at first may ultimately prove detrimental, the same way some initially minor habits can cause real issues later.
"Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time." - Arthur Ashe
Click here for our Disclaimers, Disclosures, Disavowals, And Declarations (aka - I told you so).