Quit date set
I’ve set my quit date for the 18th, Sunday - which happens to be my
birthday. As some of you know, I lost a yr long quit around 3 weeks
ago, but realise I’d spent that year in a ‘not smoking’ place (I
read about that in a recent re-post).
I’ve spent my smoking life lighting up every time I was sad, mad,
happy etc etc… I felt lousy/wonderful - so I lit up. I never
questioned it - didn’t even realise I was doing it, I just smoked.
As I understand cogquitting, what I’m going to have to do is to
learn to respond to thoughts around events, instead of to the
feelings (btw, I’ve been rereading the text of my chat to Steve last
night - I haven’t suddenly become able to quote it off the top of
my head…..I haven’t actually grasped it all that well yet ) So,
instead of ‘I’m so mad, I need to light up before I blow a fuse’ I
need to think what else might help that ‘mad’ instead of a smoke -
what is it I really need, what’s a more rational response. I think
thats the gist of it - or part of it. So, thats what I’m doing at
the moment in the lead up to Sunday, and hope that I’ll be gathering
together some ideas on better nonsmoking responses.
Thats it for now
Anita
October 14th, 2004 at 8:56 am
Congrats Anita, That’s great.
We talk about planning for events. We try to examine those events we can
You’re heading in the right direction by starting to look at why you’ve
always reacted in certain ways to certain feelings.
Our chat last night got me thinking about a few points that I’d like to
throw out here to the group. This may become a bit of a ramble and if it
becomes too convoluted, I’m sure someone will let me know
predict in a routine day and then prepare some rational dialogs to
supplement old established smoking dialogs and in doing so, we hope to
create responses that are in keeping with our goals. This implies that it’s
the event that is important. That by looking at events we are familiar
with, that we’ll learn to deal with other events that come at us suddenly
or even events we’ve never experienced before. I think that it would be
fair to say that in an average life, there is an almost infinite number and
variety of events that may occur, some of which (a 9/11) we can’t even
imagine until it’s upon us. So how does working with an infinite realm of
events prepare us to react in a nonsmoking manner to any one particular
event? It doesn’t. At least not directly. That’s because it’s not the
event that we are really examining but rather the feelings and beliefs that
are our personal part of the event. (When I refer to ‘feelings’, I’m
refering to any physical sensation of emotion or condition.) Here’s an
example…. I’m driving down the highway. A car flies close past me at
very high speed. I’m startled. My heart is pounding, I’m breathing faster
than normal. I say to myself, “That idiot must be going twice the speed
limit or more! He’s going to kill someone! That jerk shouldn’t be allowed
on the road. Where’s a cop at a time like this?!!” I’m furious and
shaking with anger. However, what if …. I’m driving down the highway.
I hear on the radio that there’s been a very serious accident and a child
is critically injured and that the father is racing to the hospital. At
that moment a car flies close past me at a very high speed. I’m startled.
My heart is pounding, I’m breathing faster than normal. I say to myself,
“Wow, that guys flying. Bet it’s the father of that child. Lord, let him
get to the hospital in time. Where’s a cop or an ambulance to take them?? I
hope people get out of his way.” In this case I’m sympathetic and concerned.
Same event -speeding car. Same physical (feeling) response to the
speeding car - startled, racing heart, rapid breathing. Different
dialog/beliefs. Very different response - concern vs anger. My response
started with an event that created feelings that were then attached to
beliefs.
If being quit means needing to be able to deal with an infinite number
of events, I’m not sure we’d ever be completely secure in our ability to
handle them all. But if being quit means being able to deal with a very
finite number of feelings in the form of emotions and conditions, then we
have a very good chance of being securely quit. When I say a ‘finite number
of feelings’, I’m talking about something in the area of a dozen or so.
Those of you who have made up a list of emotions and conditions (I hope a
few of you have, please tell me you have) how many emotions and conditions
have you come up with? Post them here if you would. Lets see what this
group can come up with. Lets create a master list of emotions and conditions.
So why are we bothering with A- activating events at all? Because it’s
only by looking at common events and then the common feelings connected to
those events that most of us can even begin to get a handle on what we
feel. I think I can hear a few of you saying “We know what we feel. We feel
our feelings all the time.” I agree that we feel them all the time, but we
don’t recognize them. Most of us have spent the better part of our lives
misreading what we felt, and that’s assuming we were even aware of a
feeling. We avoided, masked, confused, and ignored our feelings with every
cigarette we lit at every instance of anger or hunger or boredom … of
life. We generally didn’t recognize what we felt and we almost never
identified the sources of our feelings. It’s no surprise that a cigarette
was our first, and usually automatic, response.
When we learn to quickly identify what we are feeling and why,
responsible and effective ways to deal with those feelings will often
present themselves as self evident. At that point we’ll have learned to
deal with our personal part in any particular event. The first ABC, the
first ‘feeling that we learn identify, differentiate it’s source, and
respond to correctly sets the stage for learning to identify,
differentiate, and respond correctly to the rest. With only about a dozen
or so feelings to address, the process can happen very quickly.
This really has gotten convoluted or I’m just very tired or both. I’m
going to throw this out there, head to bed, and be back see if it’s a floater.
Steve
October 14th, 2004 at 4:04 pm
Thanks Steve. As I mentioned to you when we chatted, I’m now
thinking what it is I need when I think only a smoke will make me
feel better. Like last night - I’d realised I was actually hungry
and needed a snack, but had interpreted those sensations as needing
a cig. I think Susan said the same today, and that her cig
consumption had gone down - the same is happening to me too. I’d
never looked beyond the ‘I need a smoke’ feelings before - this is a
revelation to me. And yet, in other ways it seems so obvious I
wonder why I didn’t realise it before. Still, understanding all
this is one thing, what I’m going to have to do is build it in to my
daily life, and keep practising til it happens automatically.
My quit date is still set for Sunday, and I’m anxious to get started.
Thanks to you and Pam for the chats, and to everyone here for all
the posts and insights which are such a great help to me. I’m away
on a course for a couple of days starting tomorrow, but I’ll be
logging on to read - catch you later.
Anita
October 15th, 2004 at 6:41 am
I remember hearing or reading somewhere that most of us ‘needed’ about
a 1/4 of the cigs we smoked in a day in order to deal only with the
chemical addiction. The rest of the cigs we smoked were ‘because’ we were
stressed or driving or on the phone or whatever. They weren’t ‘nicotine
addiction’ cigarettes but rather behavioral ‘dealing with life’ cigarettes.
Susan and Anita, and I’m sure others of you, have noticed that as soon as
you begin to question “why this cigarette, what do I really want or need?”
your consumption begins to drop. This illustrates something very important
and I think it’s something that bears repeating often …. we have little
or no desire to smoke a cigarette if there is no good reason, if it doesn’t
make sense. However, in order to evaluate the ’sense’ of a particular
cigarette, we must be aware in the moment. Practice doing ABCs and ‘what
ifs’ (’what if’ I encounter this or that situation?). They are the
templates that train our thinking and develop our level of awareness.
Steve