Quitting Smoking and Stress!!

I've already covered it in my blog but as you know, stress plays a mojor role in your smoking activities. But today I'm talking about stress after you quit smoking.

Stress is one of the three major reasons for relapse, the other two being weight gain and withdrawal symptoms. It will usually play in your mind, when you are thinking about quitting smoking, that you won't be able to cope with difficult situations, problems and without stress without your trusty cigarette.

But the thing is, that is as far as it goes for most smokers. There are very few smokers who plan on what they are going to do, not just about stress but about any of the areas of their life that smoking affects and involves. When you take a step back, will see that a majority of your daily activies begin with, revolve around or end with a cigarette.

Without a plan on how to handle these situations you are surely destined to fail, but for now I'm just going to talk about stress and problem situations.

All of us, including non-smokers and ex-smokers, face stress and problems every day of our lives. And we all deal with these situations in different ways. For example, some of us take our frustration out in the gym or on the track or in a form of controlled agression in a tem sport, others take five minutes 'down time' or go for a walk, some drink excessive amounts of coffee, others drink and some, like you probably do smoke.

Everyone has their different coping mechanisms, and without judging any of them for being more or less effective or appropriate we can probably agree that smoking is the least positive and productive method. Yet you and millions of others do it.

So let's move forward to the days and weeks after you quit smoking. Some smokers are ok at handling a little stress but let me run you through an example of a typical day in your life. Just to let you know don't get on edge when you read this, but do put yourself in the following situaions and see how they would affect you.

7am you're up and about getting ready for the day ahead, you're thinking that a cigarette would go great with your cup of tea / coffee but you forget about it and carry on. You've had your breakfast and you are about to head for the door but you can't find your keys.

You spend ten minutes tearing the place apart and in your rush you knowck over a glass and it smashes all over the floor, no time to clean it up now. You continue to search frantically only to find that they were under some papers in the place you always leave them - you're running ten minutes late.

So you're in your car / on the bus / train tube / and there is a delay, there's been an accident and you can't get through. you're now another ten minutes late. Finally you arrive into work - just and immediately there is a phone call for you from a difficult customer or business associate. You deal with it but you are already seriously stressed and you haven't even sat down yet.

Break time arrives and all your smoking buddies go out for their cigarette break while you go for a cup of coffee or tea, only to find that there is no sugar or milk because everyone else has used it up.

Half an hour later your boss walks in, in a terrible mood because of something at home, and barks at you all that you will have to stay behind at least an extra hour today because someone made a huge mistake and you all have to work together to fix it.

Lunch time arrives but when you get to your usual eating place, they have run out of your favourite sandwhich or meal. The rest of the day is a mad rush to try to get everything done in time so you can get out of work as easly a possible. But it's all worthless as you get to the bus stop / tube and your ride has already left, you've got to wait around another fifteen minutes.

You finally get home, in the rain with your hair all over the place. You are greeted at the door by your angry partner who grills you on where you've been and asks if you remebered to buy a birthday present and card for your friend's birthday party that night - you forgot. An argument breaks out and now you're in no mood to eat.

The evening carries on like this and you are so stressed that you can only do or think of doing one thing - light a cigarette. You smoke it and feel good for about a minute, but then you hate yourself for the rest of the night for caving in.

Ok. So maybe the day and the situations have been slighly exagerated but this is a very typical and possible day that you could go through. And there are other possible factors like kids, car trouble, petty arguments, you heel breaks or you rip your trousers the possibilities are endless.

If you fail to plan on what you are going to do to reduce or handle stress then you are serisouly likely to relapse and then end up hating yourself for doing so. So you need to do two things for stress relief - find an immediate solution - somthing that can be done there and then, and secondly find something you can do at the end of every day to let go of all the tension built up during the day.

Even if you're day goes by relatively stress free it is a good idea to spen half an hour or so at the end of every day relaxing or exercising or whatever you like, so you can get used to relaxing and taking your mind off things without cigarettes. That way when you do have a bad day you are already used to dealing with it.

Stopping smoking is relatively simple when approach it correclty and plan.