On the difficulty of understanding new solutions to old problems
Ok I’m still in the group and I’m still not smoking and I’m still
learning. But I think I’ve got it now. The answer to the question
is `DO THE ABCs’. This is what I’ve been told since I joined, but if
you’re ornery, like me, then you need to whittle it down, split that
hair, and eliminate the crap before you bow to the creed. Hey, it’s
my life, and there are an awful lot of charlatans out there.
One of the major difficulties I had in subscribing to CogQuit
theories was the idea that I should replace the chemical hit with
something bland and ordinary.
E.g. you smoke you’re stressed out.
A. wow I am really wound up
B. I smoke when something happens
C. I will smoke a cigarette
(Interesting to note that while there are a million As in that ABC
above, the B and C stay the same)
Now, I have to replace that instant hit of nicotine that via arterial
blood, reaches those receptors in about 7 seconds with
A. wow I am really wound up
B. what am I feeling here? It seems my shoulders are wrapped around
my head
C. I better stretch my shoulders to relax them
So, on the first analysis, we are replacing an amazingly well
engineered drug-delivery device (this is a cigarette, in case you
don’t recognise it) that `hits the spot’ with a stretch and a
breathe This is not, immediately, a seductive option 
Personally, I like my options to be seductive But what my reaction to this drug-substitute misses to address is
that if my shoulders hit the ceiling when I was stressed out, then
the cigarette didn’t relieve that symptom at all. Not one jot. I
smoked the cigarette, but the shoulders didn’t get the benefit they
were still hunched.
So it is not `bland and ordinary’ to relax your shoulders, breathe
and stretch. It is natural and it works it relaxes your shoulders.
:))))))
Anybody out there?
Phil
January 26th, 2005 at 1:07 am
Hi Phil
I don’t think cogquitting is about “replacing chemical hits with
something bland and ordinary”. I’d see it more as dealing with the
physical consequences of emotions, triggered by the events that made
us think we ‘needed’ to smoke. If we quit, we give up getting
those ‘hits’ - but I suspect the hits were only ever really about a
body that was often crying out for its fix and got relief, rather
than a hit.
And yes - doing the ABC’s is what’ll make it all work. Thats come
home to me in recent days/weeks. Are you actively ABC’ing?
Anita
— In CognitiveQuitSmoking@y…, “dd_philpearson”
January 26th, 2005 at 6:25 am
Hi Phil,
I read your post, thought “yeah, this is all correct…”, and then I
reread the title of your post. “..the difficulty of understanding…”
I’m not sure, but I wonder if there are different ways to come to
understand. There’s the intellectual route where Mr or Mrs Higherbrain will
poke and probe and analyse and in the end come to some conclussions that
may or may not lead somewhere else. And then there’s an ‘experiential’
route. In this one we ‘do’. And as the ‘doing’ and it’s results become part
of our repeated experience we come to understand on a very different
level. However, this requires a degree of trust with which some of us have
a great deal of difficulty. Phil, I think if I were coming to cognitive
quitting now, with none of my prior experience in this area, I’d probably
be ‘examining’ it to death… endlessly questioning as to how and why and
if. Maybe this is some of the difference between men and women and the
demographics of this group, or maybe that’s just another hair.
So - what are you going to do Phil?
Steve
January 26th, 2005 at 8:55 pm
Posting AND doing aren’t mutually exclusive Phil. In fact, I think it
would be in your best interests to do both.