New Articles on Linked-In

I am now posting my articles on Linked-In. Please visit my page and connect with me there. 

Here are links to my recent articles on LinkedIn:  

July 19, 2016: "A Brief History of E-cigarettes" 

July 15, 2016: "Can it Possibly Take at Least 30 (or hundreds) of Attempts to Quit Smoking?"

June 13, 2016: "Are e-cigarettes really 95% less harmful than traditional cigarettes?"

May 28, 2016: "You Can Lead a Horse to Water..."
May 17, 2016: "It's All About the Chemistry with E-cigarettes" 

Ending your love affair with smoking

Many smokers will tell you that they "love" to smoke and a decision to become smoke-free can be as traumatic as going through a divorce.

There are three phases to any change in life: an ending of the old, a transition period and a new beginning:

Before a marriage ends, there is turmoil trying to to make the decision of whether to stay and try to make the marriage work or to end it. There is ambivalence and fear of a future without a partner. It is the same thing with quitting - it is the end of a love relationship and smokers agonize over the same issues when trying to make the decision to quit. Smokers love smoking but as it presents problems in the smokers life, the smoker starts to think that maybe that relationship needs to end. There is ambivalence about whether they should quit or not. On the one hand they love to smoke, there are so many benefits yet, there are problems also. It is no easy decision to end a marriage and smokers go through the same emotions ending a relationship with their cigarettes. 

Once the decision has been made to divorce, there is a transition period. For someone married for many years, it may feel odd to be single, not knowing how to date, or how to meet someone new. A smoker will go through a similar transition where it is easy to fall back in love with their cigarettes. Before a new relationship can begin, the old one must be completely over. For too many smokers before a new identity as a former smoker is formed, many will relapse, unable to complete the transition to that of a former smoker; just like someone going back to a previous relationship which feels comfortable. In the transition period, a smoker must learn how to learn to live every aspect of their life without a cigarette.

During the transition there can be dangers as well as opportunities:

• Dangers: decreased motivation, self-doubt where they can make it, energy is drained, uncertainty, begin overwhelmed, confusion, anxiety, control is sought but chaos abounds.
• Opportunities: a time to be creative and reframe issues from a negative into something positive.

Finally the new beginning is as a former smoker. The benefits of being smoke-free are now evident and the smoker wonders what took them so long to finally make the change.

Most of us like the status quo, we don't like a lot of change, yet with life change is constant and the status quo is temporary. We want to keep a status quo but we live in change. Change is all around us every day.

Change can evoke many different emotions. The feelings that come up during change are anxiety, stress, nervousness, maybe excitement and a sense of hope. Some emotions are positive but most are negative because change means diving into the unknown. Change is an external situation while transition is the internal psychological process of adaptation.

The smoker must learn to deal with the end of their relationship with cigarettes, learn to deal with the grieving and loss during the transition period and deal with a new beginning as a former smoker.

But before you can move forward in a new beginning, you have to let go of the old. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross gave us the Five Stages of Dying which are the same stages someone goes through of any loss: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and finally acceptance. A smoker may feel many of the same emotions in their transition from dedicated smoker to former smoker.

The psychological transition is when new values and attitudes are formed. The new beginning can bring a sense of purpose and identity. For true change there must be an emotional commitment. They are clear on their purpose. For success, the smoker must see and feel what it will be like to be a former smoker, lay out a action plan to create certainty that they will know what to do as a non-smoker. 

If you are ready to divorce your cigarettes, my book, "How to Win at Quitting Smoking" can help you through this process. 

Understanding how a quitter will go through the Stages of Change before finally quitting

On an online quitting smoking support group I had suggested Allan Carr's book, "The Easy Way to Quit Smoking" to someone who needed motivation to quit. Someone else responded back with: 

VJ -- I read your book and Allen Carrs book... I liked both but nothing helped me quit .. but myself ... and I never thought I could do it .. but I did it ..   L.

I have had smokers tell me this before and what they are really saying is at the time when they either attended my group, were counseled by me, read my book, ....they weren't ready to quit YET. My response back to L.:

My belief is that ANY time spend thinking about change leads to making that change. The Stages of Change Model has been around for a very long time which explains how a person goes from not want to make a change (precontemplation) to making the change. At each "stage" there are psychological processes that help a person move along the continuum. Here is a chart that I use when I do trainings for health care professionals:

A person in precontemplation has no desire to change. It is no use giving them a solution because they don't think they have a problem. Consciousness raising is giving them a problem--which is what Allan Carr's book is all about--changing the way you think about smoking.

Contemplation is where you want to quit but you still want to smoke. There is ambiguity--"I want to quit BUT not right now". Self-reevaluation is looking at yourself in relationship to whatever change you want to make.

L.-- commitment is what you are talking about when you say that only you helped you quit--you made the commitment to yourself. And every time you read something, every time you thought about changing, you were raising your consciousness, doing a self-reevaluation, and increasing an emotional arousal.

One of the reasons why it is so hard to quit is that everyone is at a difference stage, so giving advice to someone who is in contemplation needs to be different than someone taking action. An action step would be to tell someone to go for a walk instead of smoking (countering) but if you told that to someone who is in precontemplation--it would fall on deaf ears because they don't even want to quit, but that information gets stored away in their brain, and is put to use if and when they ever make it to the action stage.

Motivational interviewing, cognitive-behavioral therapy and relapse prevent are the type of therapy skills used at each stage.

My book has a little bit of all stages within it.

Her reply: VJ, Yes you are right . I did not think of it that way ..