3 months (almost!)
It’s coming up to 3 months since I quit, and I promised Steve when
we chatted on earlier on, that I’d update you on what’s been
happening with me.
Firstly, family life has been manic, and I’ve not been able to get
online very much in recent weeks. I’m not ready to leave the nest
yet though, and touching base for a chat to check things out and re-
focus is so important. In fact, I can’t imagine not being a part of
this group, even though I’ve been a bit of a silent member for most
of my quit.
2 teenage children that are giving me grey hair, plus being
menopausal (Steve told me about the chat a few of you had had today)
have given me a few testing times over the past few weeks
especially. I have to say though, that as fraught as life has been,
smoking is consistently an option I choose not to take. If I’m
honest it isn’t something that really appeals any more.
Cogquitting seemed instinctively right to me, and I took to it
quickly. But that’s not to say I found it easy. Those first weeks
were really hard, and it took a lot of work and a lot of patient
coaching for it to become `easy’. ABC’ing anything and everything
(it seemed) really paid off, and although I can’t predict what is
going to happen to me in the course of a day, the physical
sensations aren’t going to vary that much whatever event caused
them. And the ways I’ve found to address those sensations work.
Sometimes its hard in that it takes time, but most other times I do
what I know works and the moment passes.
My previous attempts to quit were, as I’ve said before, the `hanging
in’ variety. I didn’t address anything, I just hoped it’d pass and
get better. This quit is proof to me that working on listening to
ourselves, working out what it is we really need, and refuting those
old beliefs, really does pay dividends.
The great spin off from my cognitive quit has been the change in my
relationships with my family. Its not to say there
aren’t `moments’ - life is never going to be plain sailing with 2
teenagers - and some arguments. But how I react to them, and how my
family react to me, has changed enormously. I’d say communication
has improved hugely, because in the past I’d just think `sod it’ and
light up, and not bother getting into any discussion or debate.
And now I find myself emailing with one or 2 of the newer quitters
here, and that’s giving me a bigger buzz than any cig ever did for
me because I would never have believed this would be happening to me.
So, thanks especially to Steve for getting me here, and to Pam too.
And I’ll try and get a bit more involved in here now that life’s
calming down.
Katie (the UK one)