Turning the Fears of Quitting into Confidence of Becoming Smoke Free

Fear often holds a smoker back from even trying to quit. I remember being afraid of success, "If I quitting smoking, What will I do?" Smoking has become part of our identity, "Who am I, if I'm not a smoker?" Others have tried to quit so many times that there is a fear of another failure. The fear of gaining weight will stop some smokers, especially women, from ever trying to stop smoking. Other fears include how to handle stress without smoking, fear of pain from withdrawals, fear of being out of control and many others.
But very quickly, within a few weeks, after a smoker has quit, the smoker feels like a non-smoker and the fears present before have evaporated. A successful quitter will replace quitting fears with the fear of relapse but instead, smokers get cocky and think "I can control my smoking", or "One won't hurt". Often quitters have a selective memory, "It wasn't that hard to quit." All of these thoughts are early warning signs of slipping right back into full time smoking. Because the one fear that most smokers underestimate or overlook should be the fear of the power of addiction to nicotine. No other drug is as additive as nicotine but when speaking of addiction, it's not the intoxication of a drug but how fast the drug creates changes within the brain structure of the user--and nicotine beats all drugs in that category.
So when quitting, confront the different fears that arise, there are solutions to every problem but don't give up the fear of relapsing. See that one cigarette as your greatest enemy to what it is that you truly want-a healthy, smoke free life.