subject: Quit Smoking Tips - Your State Of Mind Makes All The Difference [print this page] One the best quit smoking tips I can give you is how to think about quitting smoking. By far the most problematic symptoms of withdrawal come from the ways in which you are thinking about smoking and not smoking. It's not possible to have no attitude at all. What attitude you take is what makes all the difference to your process, how traumatic it is and how successful you will be.
When you first quit smoking, assuming you are not avoiding and repressing, you can expect your desire to smoke to be fairly constant for about two days. For some people it's continuous and for others it comes and goes in waves. The second day is often more intense than the first.
During this time, you may also be quite disorientated, so you end up feeling rather peculiar, to say the least. After these two days (variable from person to person) you will see the desire to smoke begin to diminish.
The people I have worked with who just experience their desire, and nothing else, are willing to accept it as a temporary phase and don't see it as a problem. It doesn't have to feel like hell.
Problems arise if, when they feel the desire for a smoke, people tell themselves they can no longer satisfy it. They deny choice, and they do that because they think that to acknowledge the freedom to smoke means they will smoke. The challenge is to fully acknowledge that the option of smoking exists - without actually doing it.
If you feel any of the following symptoms of deprivation after you stop smoking, then you have not yet changed the way you are thinking in this regard:
Desire to smoke doesn't diminish. Even a week after you quit smoking, you still feel an intense and persistent desire, perhaps for hours on end, because the one thing you think you 'can't' have is the one thing you want the most.
Stress. Take a look at this list of symptoms: loss of temper, loss of sense of humor, loss of concentration, difficulty making decisions, 'cotton wool' head, tiredness not relieved by sleep, insomnia, indigestion, overeating, depression, headaches, heart palpitations, chest pains, heartburn, trembling, leg cramps, twitching in limbs.
I copied this list from a book, but it wasn't a book about smoking, it was a book about stress. It's not a complete list. Stress will show up in different ways in different people - depending on your Achilles heel.
The most important thing to understand about stress is that the symptoms are often psychosomatic: physical problems with causes created by a state of mind. Extensive research on stress points to lack of choice as the principal cause. If you have a desire and you tell yourself you can't smoke, you are guaranteed to create symptoms of stress, especially:
Irritability: which may really be repressed rage.
Anxiety: like a caged wild animal you become restless, anxious and can even reach a state of panic. Symptoms of panic attacks are: palpitations, difficulty in breathing, dizziness, hot and cold flushes, sweating and trembling.
Tension: fighting the desire can create aches in neck, shoulders and stomach, nausea and difficulty relaxing.
Depression: which could be seen as a form of repressed anger. Some of the symptoms are: loss of energy, apathy, early-morning waking, inability to concentrate or make decisions.
