When you think about quitting smoking, what are you afraid of? What scares you the most?
Here are some of the most common fears people I’ve worked with over the years have told me they’ve had going into a quit, and my answers to them:
Fear of the craves or fear that the craves will never go away.
While this is one of the most common fears that smokers thinking about quitting face, it has absolutely no basis in reality. The craves are really no big deal; in fact, as smokers, we have craves many times every day and we hardly notice them. Every time you put out a cigarette, the level of nicotine in your system starts to drop, and when it drops far enough, it triggers a crave. Sometimes we deal with the crave by smoking another cigarette, but lots of other times we can’t (or don’t want to) smoke another cigarette and the crave eventually just goes away, all by itself.
And the craves will go away, all by themselves, once you start choosing not to smoke any more, as long as you don’t fight them (see this post for a more in-depth discussion of this).
Fear of weight gain.
This is another big fear that gives a lot of people a built-in excuse for not even trying, but it doesn’t have to happen; quitting smoking does not make you gain weight: eating more than you need to eat (and eating the wrong foods) makes you gain weight. But there’s a reason that lots of people gain weight when they quit; they’re “eating their cigarettes” (see this post for an explanation of this process and how to counteract it). The good news is, a little preparation and awareness can make this a non-issue for you.
Fear of failure.
This is huge: many (maybe even most) smokers have this fear, and it prevents a lot of us from even attempting to quit (we think, “If I’m only going to fail anyway, why torture myself?”). But you don’t have to fail; I’m living proof: I quit so many times I can’t even count them all, and yet, once I changed one critical part of my thinking, I quit and haven’t had a puff in over 10 years. I talk more about this in this post and this post.
Fear of how hard it will be.
Once again, this is something that we can control. The quit is really only as hard as you make it; if you anticipate the challenges, have a plan for dealing with them, and have the right attitude about it, it doesn’t have to be hard at all. I talk about the right attitude to take in this post.
Fear of being angry and hurting others.
There are a number of reasons why we get angry when we quit: many (if not most) of us spend a lot of energy fighting the craves, and it’s a losing battle; the more you fight the craves, the more they fight back. And fighting losing battles tends to make us angry.
Also, for a lot of us, smoking covers up issues that we’d rather not deal with (how many times have you gotten mad at somebody and gone somewhere and “smoked” at them? You know what I mean). Once again, a little preparation will go a long way towards alleviating this fear.
Also, you should start practicing this phrase, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I’m quitting smoking.” It’s amazing the amount of forgiveness, understanding, and support you’ll get from people when you say this magic phrase…