Even though everyone agrees that quitting smoking is the healthiest and most sensible thing to do, we suggest answering these questions: What do you lose if you quit smoking? What did it give you? Why are you quitting?
It seems strange, but understanding, legitimizing, and being compassionate with 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 pursued, you often want to create a personal space through the cigarette.
You may also be trying to fill a void. To consume means to fill, to acquire, and that is why it is frequently used to lessen an inner sense of lack, of emptiness. Or you might 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 peer pressure or curiosity.
As you can see, there can be different motivations behind smoking, and they can be very personal and subjective.
If you feel that you are still undecided about whether to start abstinence or not, we recommend doing a balance sheet, in which you note, 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, to make a decision, and to seek alternatives to obtain the benefits you feel tobacco gives you.
When weighing the reasons in favor of smoking against the reasons to quit, you must make sure that the reasons to quit carry more weight, and that they are your own reasons, not someone else’s. The more clearly the balance tips in favor 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 consider all the arguments.
If you quit to keep someone happy, satisfy them, or please them, this process won’t be yours. You would be externalizing the reasons for quitting. Also, you’ll feel like you’re sacrificing yourself or giving up tobacco, like something is missing, rather than deciding to remove it from your life proactively and for your own reasons.
You can also begin to distinguish the motivations for the different cigarettes you smoke throughout a week, since not all cigarettes are smoked for the same reasons: because your body asks for it, as an automatism or habit, to hold up discomfort, as a reward, break, or treat, or as a small 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 disconnected from the use. That means that the motivation that was present at the beginning of smoking (connection, disconnection, filling a void, seeming older…) is no longer necessary for the use to occur, since it is repeated without the need for motivation.
If you feel that your balance tilts toward abstinence, it is important for you to know that sometimes a feeling of loss and grief is experienced when quitting smoking. Grief is a psychological and emotional experience that responds to a situation lived as a loss, and each person may experience it in a different way. It may seem contradictory, because you actually 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’s okay to listen to that part too, instead of 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 something 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 will come; anger, because of the consequences suffered, etc.
To move forward in grief, you have to allow that psychological experience, not just punish and demonize your smoker “self.” Allowing the feelings involved in these phases will make it easier to move through and integrate them and, finally, move on. On the other hand, inhibiting this content 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 impact the psychological background of dependence.
Qualitative research indicates that, if grief is worked through, allowed, and made explicit through a goodbye letter to tobacco, commitment to—and the favorable prognosis of—abstinence increase (more information in the chapter “Quit Day”). It is even suggested that the letter be shared out loud with other people in your environment or who are in the same process. This is a symbolic exercise, and each person can think of other farewell rituals that feel comfortable.
It may seem strange that we give so much space to saying goodbye, if what you really want 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 long-lasting, can become a complex relationship. In some ways it can be similar to the relationship you may come to have with other people, and built on the basis of subjective ingredients that can be addressed, if that helps you in your purpose. In fact, on many occasions, we can call a toxic relationship the person’s relationship with tobacco, first because tobacco is a toxin, and second because the person relies on something that actually harms them, like in a toxic romantic relationship. The harm resulting from tobacco use can generate discomfort that the person tries to sustain, ironically, with more tobacco. What harms them becomes, at the same time, their comfort or support.
Also, fear may be playing a role in the process of deciding to quit smoking. There are more innate fears, like fear of threats or of losing your life. This fear can be very motivating when you have received a diagnosis that threatens survival, and you have to quit smoking to survive. Other fears are more constructed, meaning they have been shaped; they are based on personal experience, on each person’s way of functioning. These fears can be immobilizing. 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 propose 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 got sick and died from the consequences of smoking? What are you missing out on by smoking? 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 can be afraid of accidents, in which you lose control. You can fear quitting smoking, because the threat lies in not succeeding and feeling unable to manage your life. Or you can 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 don’t quit smoking for fear of failing in the attempt, and who protect themselves against this anticipation of failure by continuing to smoke and making no changes. They are probably prioritizing protection from failure over the freedom to choose. That is, they prefer to lose freedom rather than expose themselves to failure. We can never guarantee anyone that they won’t feel like a failure. The work is more about accepting 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 the feeling of failure arrives, even if there is a relapse, that should not be the final stop in the process, and there are ways to redirect the relapse, build on what has been achieved, and rethink goals, strategies, and an action plan.
Fears about quitting smoking are more like reasons not to quit smoking, and not so much reasons to smoke. Remember that by not smoking you won’t miss out on anything.
As for the reasons why to quit, we ask you: Why now and not before?
You probably have very clear reasons to quit smoking: health benefits, financial benefits, benefits 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 the change.
Before taking action we ask you, how important is it for you to quit smoking, with 0 being not important at all and 10 being 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 did you choose your score and not a 0?
And we close this capsule with one last question: how much do you trust that you will be able to quit smoking, with 0 being not at all and 10 being a lot?
0 ___________________ 10
What or who could help you increase that score? What signs would let you see that you’ve gone up one point on that scale? Why did you choose your score and not a 0?