Relaxation techniques to help me stop smoking?
June 7th, 2011
I’m PUSHING myself to stop smoking! It’s simple: make the decision and stick to it, right? Problem: today someone rubbed me the wrong way and I got angry: the first thing I did was reach for a cigarette, and now I’m stuck with another box…
Does anyone have any suggestions how I can calm myself down when I get angry? If I can control that, then I’m sure that’s yet another “trigger” to smoke that I can handle!
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Posted in Stop smoking help | 
Tags: Calm, cigarette, help, Relaxation, Relaxation Techniques, smoking, stop, techniques
eating menthol candy or chewing gums. or there is a gum flavored cigar. try to find one.
I would look into electronic cigarettes. It’s very interesting, I’ve already ordered one and it’s in the mail. You still get nicotine, and it perfectly emulates a cigarette, but no tars, no carcinogens, no cancer causing chemicals, no bad smell, no second hand smoke, no flame (So you can smoke them anywhere!) Try this website: http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com
edit:
They also come with cartridges of varying levels of nicotine (High, med, low, none) so you can slowly ween yourself off of it, but still have the physical activity of smoking (Oral fixation)
I quit smoking when my doctor said “Quit smoking or go blind.” Well, it wasn’t exactly like that, but I had to have an eye operation that required me to be face down constantly for 2 weeks…and smoking would mean smoke drifting into my eyes! So I threw my last cigarette away as I entered the hospital (four years ago) and haven’t wanted one since. (Of course I’d not been smoking for the two weeks previous!)
One thing I learned on those few occasions I craved…was that the urge to smoke lasts two minutes. If you can get through those two minutes…you’re home free until the next time. Find something to do for those two minutes!
I’m not sure if relaxation exercises will help, but the grand-daddy of all such techniques is Jacobson’s “Progressive Relaxation” (developed in the 1920s). http://www.psicoarea.org/english/relaxation.htm
Good luck in all this…I know it’s tough, but the results are worth it. (I, for example, have recovered six notes in my upper range, which really helps when I sing with my barbershop group!)
So you get angry IN ORDER TO want a smoke? (That’s an excuse…you don’t have to get angry just to want to smoke! Hell, go ahead and smoke, if that’s what you want, but DON’T PLAY THOSE GAMES WITH YOURSELF.)
And by the way…there are all kinds of substitute ways to get nicotine into your system, which is what your body craves when you want a smoke! the patch and all that stuff. I tried them…they don’t work. Or rather, they DO work to keep your body addicted to nicotine, and eventually you just go back to the best way to get nicotine into your system…a cigarette.
I would highly recommend going to your health care provider and asking for Chantix. It is amazing medicine that takes away your urge to smoke. When you smoke, the nicotine from the cigarettes “attaches” to dopamine receptors in your brain and dopamine is released into your system. The dopamine makes you feel good (normal). When you don’t smoke, your body is craving the dopamine. The Chantix actually binds to those dopamine receptor sites in your brain and gives you small amounts of dopamine all the time so you don’t have the cravings. Most people need to take it for 3 months, but usually stop smoking without much fuss after a week or two.
You may have identified one of your triggers here.
I have observed people who have a difficult time waiting (at bus stops) to have a higher percentage of smokers.
People do find ways to soothe themselves. It does make sense that learning to respond differently to the negative feelings within would assist you in learning new behaviors. Relaxation can be one of those ways to respond differently.