Although everyone agrees that quitting smoking is the healthiest and most sensible thing to do, we suggest answering the questions: What do you lose if you quit smoking? What did it give you? Why are you quitting?
It may seem strange, but understanding, legitimising and being compassionate towards the part of you that wants to smoke can help you quit. That’s why we ask you: what was the initial motivation for starting to smoke?
We can distinguish between motivation to connect: with other people, with sensations, with pleasure, with reward, with a more attractive side of yourself; and motivation to disconnect: from your surroundings, from a task, from stress, from emotional discomfort, from suffering, from family or from work.
When disconnection is being pursued, people often want to create a personal space through the cigarette.
You may also be seeking to fill a void. Consuming means filling, acquiring, and that is why it is frequently used to mitigate an internal feeling of lack, of emptiness. Or, you may start smoking to seem more interesting or more adult, or to rebel.
In general, men or boys smoke more to cultivate a certain image of themselves, for pleasure or out of boredom; and women or girls, due to pressure from their surroundings or out of curiosity.
As you can see, there can be different motivations behind smoking, and they can be very personal and subjective.
If you feel you are still undecided about whether to start abstinence or not, we recommend that you do a balance sheet, in which you write down, in a 4-cell table, the benefits you feel you get from smoking (1.) and from being abstinent (2.), and the disadvantages you associate with smoking (3.) and with abstinence (4.). This exercise can help you clarify the relationship you have with tobacco, make a decision, and look for alternatives to obtain the benefits you feel tobacco gives you.
When weighing up the reasons in favour of smoking against the reasons for quitting, you need to make sure that the reasons for quitting carry more weight, and that they are your own reasons, not someone else’s. The more clearly the balance tips in favour of quitting smoking, the less willpower will be needed in the process. If you don’t feel the balance has a clear outcome, perhaps you are in an earlier phase and should give yourself more space and time to weigh up all the arguments.
If you quit to keep someone happy, satisfy them or please them, this process will not be yours. You would be externalising the reasons for quitting. What’s more, you will feel as though you are making a sacrifice or giving up tobacco, that something is missing, rather than deciding to remove it from your life proactively and for your own reasons.
You can also start to distinguish the motivations behind the different cigarettes you smoke over the course of a week, since not all cigarettes are smoked for the same reasons: because your body craves it, as an automatism or habit, to manage discomfort, as a reward, a break or a treat, or as a little space for yourself, to step out of your routine, to seem older…
However, when there is an addiction, it often happens that the motivation becomes detached from the use. That means that it is no longer necessary for the motivation that was present at the start of smoking (connection, disconnection, filling a void, seeming older…) to appear for that use to occur, since it repeats itself without needing motivation.
If you feel that your balance tips towards abstinence, it is important for you to know that, sometimes, people experience a feeling of loss and grief when they quit smoking. Grief is a psychological and emotional experience that responds to a situation experienced as a loss, and each person can experience it in a different way. It may seem contradictory, because in reality you want to remove tobacco from your life, but let’s remember that this means there is a part of you that feels tobacco gave you something, and it is OK to listen to that part too, rather than denying it.
To move through grief, it is advisable to remember what you were looking for in tobacco, how and when it entered your life, whether there is anything good it brought you, whether there are anecdotes or curious situations in which you remember yourself with a cigarette in your hand; but also to think about why you want to distance yourself from it.
Part of this process is expressing the associated emotions, which can be of any kind: sadness, because of the loss; fear, about what is to come; anger, because of the consequences suffered, etc.
To move forward through grief, you have to allow that psychological experience, not just punish and demonise your “smoker self”. Allowing the feelings involved in these phases will make it easier to move through them and integrate them and, finally, move on. By contrast, inhibiting these contents can promote stagnation or regression.
In that sense, farewell rituals as a form of emotional digestion are a good predictor of the success of the process. With them you can psychologically anchor the transition to the new phase of your life and influence the psychological background of dependence.
Qualitative research indicates that, if grief is worked through, allowed, and made explicit through a farewell letter to tobacco, commitment to abstinence and its prognosis improve (more information in the chapter “Quit Day”). It is even suggested that the letter be shared aloud with other people in your surroundings or who are going through the same process. This is a symbolic exercise, and each person can think of other farewell rituals that feel comfortable for them.
It may seem strange that we give so much space to saying goodbye, if what is actually desired is to get away from cigarettes as soon as possible. It is also true that there are people who do not feel that loss or grief, and who can skip this part.
The justification for these proposals lies in the fact that the person–tobacco relationship, especially if it has been prolonged, can become a complex relationship. In some aspects it can resemble the relationship you may have with other people, and be built on the basis of subjective ingredients that can be addressed, if that helps you in your aim. In fact, on many occasions, we can call the person’s relationship with tobacco a toxic relationship: first because tobacco is a toxin, and second because the person relies on something that actually harms them, as in a toxic romantic relationship. The harm derived from tobacco use can generate discomfort that the person tries to manage, ironically, with more tobacco. What harms them becomes at the same time their comfort or support.
Fear may also be playing a role in the process of deciding to quit smoking. Some fears are more innate, such as fear of threats or of losing your life. This fear can be very motivating when a diagnosis threatening survival has been received, and you have to quit smoking to survive. Other fears are more constructed, meaning they are elaborated and based on personal experience, on each person’s way of functioning. These fears can be immobilising. For example: fear of failing. Fear of not being strong enough to do it. Fear of not knowing how to live without tobacco. Fear of no longer being yourself if you don’t smoke. Fear of losing a part of yourself if you quit smoking. Fear of missing out (the famous FOMO).
In this case, we suggest cultivating the fear of staying the same: what could happen if you keep smoking? What would happen if you didn’t try to quit? Who would miss you if you became ill and died because of the consequences of smoking? What are you missing out on because you smoke? Connecting with some fears is healthy, because it brings you closer to the need to protect yourself.
Fear usually follows the following emotional pattern:
Emotional pattern:
Situation → Emotion → Need
Threat (real or constructed) → Fear → Protection
What is perceived as a threat can be very different. You may be afraid of accidents, in which there is a loss of control. You may fear quitting smoking because the threat lies in not achieving it and feeling unable to manage your life. Or you may be afraid of continuing to smoke if you have received a diagnosis of lung cancer, which threatens life itself. When you feel fear, you need to build protection against what you perceive as a threat.
Let’s take the idea that there are people who do not quit smoking because they fear failing in the attempt, and who protect themselves against this anticipation of failure by continuing to smoke and not making any change. They are probably prioritising protection from failure over the freedom to decide. That is, they prefer to lose freedom rather than expose themselves to failure. We can never guarantee anyone that they will not end up feeling like a failure. The work is more about assimilating that getting moving, making a change or making a decision includes the possibility of making mistakes or failing. When that possibility is integrated and accepted, it will be easier to take a stance and move forward. As we will see in module 3, even if a feeling of failure arrives, even if a relapse happens, that should not be the final stop in the process, and there are ways to redirect the relapse, make use of what has been achieved, and rethink goals, strategies and an action plan.
Fears about quitting smoking are more like reasons not to quit smoking, rather than reasons to smoke. Remember that by not smoking you are not going to miss out on anything.
As for the reasons why you are quitting, we ask you: Why now and not before?
You are surely very clear about the reasons for quitting smoking: health benefits, financial, in relationships, etc.
But you have chosen this precise moment and it may be useful to know why, given that it will connect you with your personal motivation (what for?). And as we have already seen, to overcome an addiction you have to be an active part of change.
Before taking action, we ask you: how important is it for you to quit smoking, where 0 is not important at all and 10 is very important?
0 ___________________ 10
If your score is below 7, there may need to be a prior process to reaffirm that purpose. And along those lines we encourage you to reflect:
What would have to happen for that score to increase? What do you like about smoking and what do you dislike? What worries you about quitting smoking? Why have you chosen your score and not a 0?
And we close this pill with one last question: how confident are you that you will manage to quit smoking, where 0 is not at all and 10 is a lot?
0 ___________________ 10
What or who could help you increase that score? What signs would show you that you have gone up one point on that scale? Why have you chosen your score and not a 0?