People who watch me talking about myself sometimes say I'm good at introspection, but I think about half of what I do is making up superstitions so I have something doable to trick myself into making some other thing, previously undoable, doable. ("Clearly, the only reason I haven't written my paper is that I haven't had a glass of hot chocolate, when I'm cold and thirsty and want refined sugar." Then I go get a cup of cocoa. Then I write my paper. I have to wrap up the need for cocoa in a fair amount of pseudoscience for this to work.) This is very effective at mood maintenance for me - I was on antidepressants and in therapy for a decade as a child, and quit both cold turkey in favor of methods like this and am fine - but I don't know which (if, heck, any) of my conclusions that I come to this way are "really true" (that is, if the hot chocolate is a placebo or not). They're just things that pop into my head when I think about what my brain might need from me before it will give back in the form of behaving itself. You have to take care of you brain for it to be able to take care of you. If it won't tell you what it wants, you have to guess. (Or have your iron levels checked :P)

I tend to think of my brain as a thing with certain needs. Companionship, recognition, physical contact, novelty, etc. Activities that provide these tend to persist. Figure out what your dysfunctional actions provide you in terms of your needs. Then try and find activities that provide these but aren't so bad and try and replace the dysfunctional bits. Also change the situation you are in so that the dysfunctional default actions don't automatically trigger. My dream is to find a group of like minded people that I can socialise and work with. SIAI is very tempting in that regard.