By: Raleigh Missy

Raleigh Missy — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 19:14:26 +0000

and hi Mary, it’s good to see you again.
Mary, you said “I haven’t ABC’d in forever.” It’s a common experience
among cog quitters to stop ‘working the quit’ and find urges creeping in
now and then. You started out with your lists and ABCs and being very aware
of what your body needed. The result was that you were fairly easily able
to choose appropriate responses. I think that if you turn back to your
tools for a while, especially while working on a diet, you’ll find that the
smoking associations will be dissipate. Congratulations on your soon to
be 6 month milestone Sandy and Lauren, welcome to our little cognitive quitting corner of
the net. You’ve both been long term smokers and I’m guessing that you both
want to be ‘not smokers’ (I think ‘nonsmoker’ or ‘exsmoker’ is a semantics
game.) Cognitive Quitting is an exercise in creating awareness where we’ve
previously functioned on an automatic level. Toward that end, make your
choice to be a not smoker very conscious and clearly defined. These are the

Foundation Statements:
1- I DO NOT want to be a smoker.
2- There is NO situation where allowing Warren to choose a smoking response
will be appropriate.
3- I’m prepared to trust completely that no matter how uncomfortable,
cranky, or confused I may be, these foundation statements are ALWAYS true
and I will always help Warren find a nonsmoking response to whatever I am
feeling.
4- I will conscientiously address and deal with any health issues, physical or
emotional, that may arise.
5- In order to retrain Warren, I WILL DO THE WORK. Reading and thinking alone
will not make permanent changes to my patterns of behavior.
Once we’ve clearly defined our goal and closed an ‘back door’ we might
later want to use, we want to begin to understand the ins and outs of why
we lit up a cigarette on an average of 20 - 30 times a day. These ins and
outs of smoking are contained in your 3 lists. Why the lists? Because
smoking is an extremely simple behavior. At it’s most basic, it’s nothing
more than an established response to physical cues. However, most of us
were aware of only the general Reason to Smoke i.e. time to get up and get
going, stress, hunger, driving, boredom, an argument, etc. Every one of
your Reasons to Smoke can be attached to some Emotion/Condition. And every
Emotion/Condition can be defined in terms of physical sensations. The good
news is that there are a very limited number of physical cues that we’ll
have to deal with. The bad news is that it takes a bit of work.
So write out those lists (Sandy you did a good job with yours. you’ll
be adding to them as you go) and post them here. You’ll see that smokers
share many of the same Reasons to Smoke.
Once we’ve got the lists done, we’ll start with the Timer Exercise. If
you haven’t read about that yet, I’ll append it to the end of this post.
This is an active method for quitting. You create new patterns of
behavior that work because they address the real needs of the moment. Stick
with it and you’ll soon be on your way.
Steve
ps- on a personal note, I want to thank Pam for taking over and
pointing our newbies in the right direction. I had hoped that this period
in my life would include much more time to write, post, and
chat. Unfortunately, that’s not been the case at all. In fact just the
opposite has become the reality. We sold our house at the end of June and
have been stepping from the frying pan into the fire ever since. The most
recent ’step’ was two weeks ago to the eastern shore of Maryland (hi
Lauren) right into the path of hurricane Isabelle. Did I mention that I’m
living with the slowest internet connection I’ve seen in years? Once you’ve
had high speed, dial up at 28.8 is absolute agony. and it just keeps gettin
better.
Once again, thanks Pam I do appreciate you holding down the fort.
The Timer Exercise:
After you’ve written out your 3 lists have established a ‘data base’ of
personal information, here’s a way to begin to be more aware of that
information as you experience it throughout your day. Get yourself a timer.
A simple kitchen timer or something similar is ideal. Once an hour take a
few moments to make some notes in a notebook re: what you are feeling. Note
emotional feelings, physical sensations, conditions. Make a few notes re:
appropriate ways you might address those feelings. This doesn’t take more
than a moment. Reset your timer and carry on with your day. An hour later,
do it again. At first you’ll likely feel a bit unable to identify your
feelings…. just do it. Follow this routine for 3 or 4 days and you’ll
find that you’ve become very adept at identifying what you feel physically
at any moment during your day.

Comments on: THANKS, PAM!

By: Raleigh Missy