givemestrength
4 posts
Registered:
18 Mar 2024
13 Jun
in reply to
emily, quit coach
Thanks Emily AND dublinguy. It's difficult to bounce things off of non-smokers because it tends to be uninteresting to them and they can't relate and I would imagine I just sound like I'm bragging to my smoking friends, so I like talking here. I became anxious when I quit, or more so, it's like there is stuff on my plate that I'm not getting to. I can finish everything on my to-do list and sit like a deer in headlights. No accomplishment feelings, like a not-done-yet feeling, incomplete. I worked on metitation for years to get grounded and feel present and smell the roses and it's like I lost it all. So at 6 weeks in now, I'm looking at how that could still be. It's the absence of the good trigger. There are good and bad triggers in life, or pavlovian reactions, and a cigarette told me I had finished, that I did a good job, that I could turn the world off now, that I earned the priveledge of feeling satisfied and grounded. Now there is no cigarrette. So I go try to accomplish something else. Still nothing, so I try doing something else. Eventually I pass out for the night, but my life feels so racey, like I'm always racing to something and never getting there. You know? Do I replace the reward at the end of a task or day? How many years would it take to create a new trigger?