Cognitive Quit Smoking

HALT - hunger, anger, lonely/bored, tired
Those are the 4 major stressors. We all experience them.
In my last post I used a segmented orange as a way to visualize some
the intellectual, emotional, and physical components of anger. There
were two examples of thought segments about a co-worker and two of
physical segments that come with anger. I had a rough time coming up
with emotional segments which is a bit embarrassing since anger
certainly comes with emotional segments. The problem may be my
inability to separate intellectual from emotional. I’m sure some of
you are better at it than I.
What I’d like to suggest is that we put together a list, sort of a
reference list of segments that are characteristic of each of the
halt stressors. I’d imagine that your segments would vary from mine
and that’s exactly what I’m looking for, a spectrum that includes us
all as individuals.

The format that pops to my mind looks like this:
Stressor-
Intellectual segments:
Emotional segments:
Physical segments:
And it might go like this.
Hunger-
Intellectual segments: “My stomach is saying feed me” “I’m too busy
to stop and eat” “I should have thought to bring some sort of snack I
could eat on the run”
Emotional segments:
Physical segments: Tightness in stomach, churning stomach, hollow
feeling in stomach
Anger-
Intel segs: (these would be situation specific. I’ll use
driving) “Could they go any slower??” “Come on! Find the gas peddle!
It’s the long one on the right!!” “Look at that jerk. Ran out of
merge lane so he’s driving in the breakdown lane just to get a few cars ahead”
Emot segs:
Phys segs: Knotted stomach. Clenched jaw. General muscle tension.
Rapid shallow breathing.
Lonely/Bored- (I see lonely as more emotional while bored has an
intellectually barren quality. How would you differentiate between
them? Would you?)
Intel lonely segs: “I wish I had someone to talk to”
Emot lonely segs: “I didn’t feel like this when what’s their name
was here. What was their name? Great, I’m lonely AND I’m losing my memory”
Phys lonely segs: Heaviness in chest. Shallow breathing. Slouched posture.
Intel bored segs: “There’s nothing to do”
Emot bored segs:
Phys bored segs: Shallow breathing. Slouched posture.
Tired-
Intel segs: “I’ve been at this too long.” ” I need break” “Wish I’d
gone to bed earlier last night.”
Emot segs: cranky (Once heard a remark that the only difference
between men and boys is the size of their shoes and the cost of their toys)
Phys segs: shallow breathing. feeling of ‘drained’. ache between my
shoulder blades.
Obviously, these reflect my experience of the HALT stressors. Yours
may be altogether different. There is no ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’,
there is only your experience. I hope some of you will think about
this and share some of your segments.
Steve

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 2:58 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.