Ok, so who doesn’t know that smoking or vaping is bad for you, really bad! “Tell me something I don’t already know!” Yet, you have that underlying anxiety about what your smoking is doing to your body, and wondering when the other shoe will drop. You don’t want to tempt fate, but… You don’t feel ready, and you anticipate it will be a fight. You’ve tried to quit in the past, but it was just too hard! Going without nicotine made you miserable, and who wants that? So, you are extremely skeptical about any product or program out there because you have been there, and done that. Welcome to my world! That’ s how I thought and felt before I was finally able to stop.
Every program or product out there is offering you some other form of relief from the discomfort of stopping nicotine in vapes or cigarettes. That amounts to the same thing as smoking or vaping: you are replacing the neeed for comfort from nicotine for another form of comfort. Psychologically, that is the same as smoking. It is born out of the premise that discomfort is bad and relief from discomfort is good. So, just as the nicotIne gives you relief, now you are looking to replace that need for comfort through something else. That is the same action as smoking or vaping!
Look, I am not going to sugar coat this: if you want to get free from nicotine once and for all, then you will need ot go through a temporary experience called withdrawal. It is what happens when you are withdrawing from nicotine. It is survivable. You don’t need to be knocked out or hospitalized. It is a temporary experience of discomfort, not pain. Pain is what happens when you get a toothache, discomfort is a longing and knawing sensation, it is not permanent. You have not been taught how to deal with it. You only have learned to try to block it out, to run from it, to do everything to escape from feeling it.
Everything smokers and vapers are taught through programs and products encourage them to fear it, and to do their best to avoid it. But how are they going to succeed at getting on the other side of withdrawal if they only know how to fight it? They are only making it worse by their refusal to experience it. “See, this is miserable because I still want to smoke! Oh, I wish it would go away” That is the kind of self-talk that goes on. And they end up going back to smoking because they see the discomfort of withdrawal as being their problem!
What if withdrawal was seen and experienced as a positive experience? What if they saw it as the solution instead of the problem? What if it became something that people would be willing to welcome as part of the process?
Did you know that what we resist, persists!? Is that not true? What happens when we try to block out sadness, or anger? Does it magically go away? Or does it not more easily go away through the acknowledgement of those feelings, by having them, not fighting them?
The way most people have been trained is in my opinion, upside down. Withdrawal is the avenue to true freedom. It is temporary, it is survivable, and it is empowering to go through it with one’s yes open, and with the willingness to allow it to wash over, ebb and flow through one’s experience. That is the way to get free once and for all.
About 70% of smokers and vapers want to quit, but they have stopped trying because they can’t see a clear path to stopping that they haven’t already tried. They haven’t tried this for fear the cure will be worse than the problem. They don’t know that this way is truly the “easier and softer” way. Not one of my clients are sorry they stopped with this approach. And they are all surprised it was not the miserable experience they had feared it would be.
I urge the curious to book a free half hour session with me. Join me. Its peaceful being here on shores of the other side of the debate: whether to go back to smoking or not. That conflict is no longer present. It can be a permanent solution for anyone who has already tried those other methods that have not worked.