Those kinds of habits can be very hard to break in RL, especially when they're motivated by a deeper, unacknowledged flaw -- I imagine it's not much different for fictional characters. *pompoms*
Thank you! Yeah, I am finding that a surprising amount of my original thing is about "how people deal as adults with the way their upbringings have shaped them," which has a lot to do with recognizing and dealing with these habits. I don't know where any of this came from...