My therapist told me if you've experienced many bad things in life your brain is pretty much wired to seek out negative experiences because they are familiar, comforting and the brain is used to do so. This can show up in different ways, such as doom scrolling, watching a youtube video you actually kinda hate, hanging out with people you don't like or aren't good for you and so on.
We established this phrase that this specific part of my brain is the highway (easily accessible, broad and paved road) while what I personally would like to seek out is the less travelled gravel road through the countryside.
This mental image helped a ton because now I can catch myself driving on the highway when I don't want to (takes practice, like you said, Lucie!) and start changing to drive on the country road aka figure out what makes me feel good and pursue that instead.