When you’re stressed, you resort to old habits: your routine, the one you formed as a defense all those years ago. You start to behave as the self that was reinforced, the self that stayed safe. When you do this, your brain rewards you with feelings of safety. The cycle continues.
Opening Facebook is your trigger (a 30-second-or-less action) that kickstarts a routine (endlessly scrolling) that is rewarded (by feelings of safety and security) by allowing you to avoid doing the thing that stresses you out. The same goes for picking an outfit. Once you grab one familiar item of clothing, more familiar items will follow, and any bolder items end up staying on the hanger in your closet while your brain rewards you with feelings of comfort that come from sticking to the status quo.
Say you want to do something outside your comfort zone — whether that’s as difficult as applying for a new job or as small as picking an outfit in the morning. You sit down at your computer to start the job application, but you open Facebook “real quick” before you get started. Next thing you know, you’ve been scrolling through Facebook photos for an hour and your job application remains incomplete.