I went through many stages of quitting before I finally nailed this last one. I can tell you the diffrence though.
In the past i had always blamed everything on quitting, from an aching back to a tooth ache, I soon realised this time though that not everything is to do with quitting. It does tend to overtake your life but these things would have happened whether you quit or not.
The second thing is that i thought that I had to somehow exorcise every trigger i had for smoking, for example, i thought I had to deal with friends i had not seen for a long time, I thought that I may feel an emotion I did not feel very often such as deep sadness or euphoria and that these may catch me off guard. The truth however was much simpler. All I had to do was find a way of dealing with feelings of anxiety. There was no other trigger other than anxiety. That knot in the stomach, the tension across the shoulders and into the neck and face, the hollow feeling that seemed to go on forever, That was not a craving but a feeling of anxiety. The thing is it had been hijacked by smoking. So no matter who you are one thing that is certain is that you will feel at some point in the future anxiety. This is the one emotion that keeps us safe, it is instinct. It is there to protect us and cannot be ignored. I am going to tell you now the mistake that we all made.
Many people think that the first cigarette they tried was there downfall, it wasn't it was the second, and the third and every cigarette thereafter. The first one would have been awful, you will have felt sick and dizzy, your throat would have burnt and your legs would have buckled. That is what a cigarette does. It is poison, all those feelings and responses to that first cigarette were the bodies and imune systems way of protecting you from toxic poisioning. When you experience toxic poisioning your body releases a number of chemicals to help you combat this. One is Cortisol and the other is called DHEA. Cortisol raises your awareness about danger and stress. It prepares you to stand and fight or run away. DHEA is the opposite. It is released to calm you dowm again after the perceived threat has gone away. They act as a team as one balances the other out. Another chemical that will be released is adrenalin. This is what gave you that innitial rush.
For those that never try another cigarette they have a perfect memory for what a cigarette does, absolutely nothing. It made those people feel afraid and anxious and no matter who you are you will never want or need to feel like that on purpose, It defies natural instinct, The one thing all humans avoid at all cost is fear and anxiety. All they will do is let the chemicals of the cigarette come out of their system, often in the background and before long their levels of Cortisol and DHEA will be at resting levels again. If they become anxious again they will not see smoking as an answer becuase they have a perfect memory for smoking. They will start to develope their own natural coping techniques for stress and anxiety.
However we made the mistake of trying another. Why when we thought the first one was so bad, I'll tell you. Perception. Our perception of smoking was that it must do something other wise why would all these people be doing it, why would all these people risk there lives for this. It must be magical and all we felt was sick, dizzy and afraid. We must be doing something wrong.
So we smoke another and this time the nicotine which is a stimulent of DHEA (remember the natural calmer) reduces those feelings of anxiety to a less frightning level, We actually feel something, We do not know what it was but is was something and from that moment on we try to get that feeling back, We build beliefs around the fact that it appeared to get rid of the fear. But remember if you hadn't smoked the first one there would not have been any fear nad anxiety in the first place., But you now have this distorted memory for what smoking actually does. Coupled with your distorted perceptions you now have a distrorted memory. Everytime you smoke from then on there will be a sustained overproduction of cortisol. you have a constant feed of anxiety that will turn into fear if not dealt with so you smoke a cigarette before it can get to fear. This releases the DHEA that appears to reduce the anxiety. It doesn't it just raises it so as to match the elevated levels of the cortisol. As the DHEA starts to decrease the effects of Cortisol (that havent changed at all) start to take over again. Giving you feelings of anxiety. This is what smokers think is withdrawal from nicotine.
And slowly you start to blame the fact that you have not had one rather than the truth which is you feel this way because of the last cigarette you smoked, Stop smoking and that feeling will go away but you don't link the two things becuase no one has ever told you that is what is happening.
Everyone quitting thinks they have to have super human reserves of willpower to be able to fight off the temptation and cravings but what if I was to say to you you can quit with no willpower at all.
First of all you have to understand what willpower actually is,... It is the internal struggle between your concsious mind and your subconscious mind. Some people prefer to call them the outer voice and inner voice. Your outer voice (conscious mind) controls your everyday actions such as getting up for work in the morning, crossing the road, deciding what to wear. Your inner voice (subconscious mind) controls instictual things such as breathing, thirst, hunger.
So willpower, the strugle of the will to do something or not do something which ever the case may be, But what you have to realise is that struggle only exist inside you, there is no one else that directly controls you, no higher being or third person. So what it boils down to is which has the most power, the inner or the outer voice. If you like imagine it as the devil and the angel sat on your shoulder, the angel (outer voice) stating the rational reasonable argument why you shouldn't smoke and the devil (the inner voice) shouting about all the things that will go wrong if you quit. 9 times out of 10 the devil has a louder voice and will win. But what if they were both to agree. if they agreed there would be no struggle, no fight.
At the moment your subconscious mind sees smoking as a safety net against fear and anxiety, you see it as the answer. By you saying to yourself "Right, I am just going to stop smoking" your Subconscious immediately goes on the defensive. It says to you "you cannot just stop something that I see as the way to keep you out of danger" But what if you could convince it that smoking is doing the opposite, in other words smoking is causing the vast ammount of your fear and anxiety. This is done by showing yourself that the act of smoking the last cigarette and the way you feel about an hour later are directly connected rather than as you see it now, two totally unrelated acts, every drug taken acts on the body from the moment it is taken until the moment the last traces are out of your system. However with smoking only the first five minutes is attributed to that cigarette. You have then convinced yourself that the feelings you have after that MUST be becuase you need another.(See above) For as long as you feel you need another there will always be a want, take away the want and there is no need.
The other way to get the permission of your subconscious mind (because that is what you are trying to do) is to make it realise there is no point smoking.
There is a technique that can start this process.
First of all take three deep breathes and I mean deep, right from your boots.
Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth just behind your top teeth and breathe in until your lower stomach starts to rise.(not your shoulders) Then blow out with your lips together as if you are blowing up a balloon. blow it out slowly and right to the end of the breath. The blowing out should take approx twice as long as the breath in. I good way to remember this is 7 in and 11 out (7-11). Then light the cigarette. what you will feel is nothing. I mean you will not get that kick you are expecting, there will be nothing. It will be like smoking the mildest lowest tar cigarette you have ever smoked. Now you may ask what is the point, well by deep breathing you are releasing endorphins, a brain chemical that naturally give you the feel good factor. secondly by doing this you are stealing the effect of the cigarette. After all you only smoke to get that initial kick right ?
After that you just have to smoke the rest of it otherwise it would just be a waste of time and money right ?
By taking away the cigarettes power your body and mind will start to reject smoking, If it doesn't do what you thought it did anymore then you will get the permission needed to let go of smoking as your safety net. your immune system will start to work again as the only reason it allowed you to smoke was because it thought it was keeping you out of danger., however by proving to yourself that smoking does nothing at all except make you afraid and anxious rather than curing those feelings it will make you reject smoking once and for all
Smoking for 22 years - Quit for 4 years. Online assistance for stopping smoking
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