After You Quit Smoking,
How to STAY Quit
by www.Sedona.com Close to 48 million Americans smoke cigarettes, but the majority of them are trying to quit, or want to, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). In fact, since 1965 over 40 percent of adults who have ever smoked have quit. Further, each year about 1.3 million smokers stop smoking. If you are in this group, congratulations! Quitting smoking, according to the AHA, greatly reduces your risk of heart disease and other health conditions, and can add years to your life. What you may have noticed, though, is that while there are countless resources to help you quit smoking, there’s not a whole lot out there to help support you after you quit smoking. Yet, it’s during this fragile period that relapses can occur. Be Wary of Common “Situational” Triggers For many smokers, smoking is not just about the cigarette itself, but also the act of smoking. You may have come to associate drinking coffee with having a cigarette, for instance, or may be accustomed to smoking while driving, after eating, during work breaks, first thing in the morning, or right before bed. Along with overcoming the physical cravings for nicotine, then, smokers must also learn to overcome these “situational cravings.” According to a 2006 online survey, 87 percent of smokers who quit have started again because of “situational cravings,” while another 80 percent believe they could quit successfully if they could control these cravings. "These survey findings are an important reminder that situational cravings can occur anytime and in any place a smoker associates with smoking," said Dr. Raymond Niaura, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School. "Situational cravings are triggered by events that the brain has associated with smoking and if left untreated, can cause a lapse to smoking in as quickly as 10-15 minutes." How to Overcome Your Smoking Cravings and Stay Smoke-Free Every time you reach for a cigarette, there is an underlying feeling driving you to do so. Perhaps you are bored, anxious, tired, excited or a combination of things. The key to staying smoke-free after you quit smoking is to learn to release these underlying feelings with The Sedona Method, a do-it-yourself tool that is scientifically proven to help you break free from addictions such as smoking. “Look at the feeling that is motivating you to reach for the cigarette, and let it go. Once you let go of the motivating feelings the desire to smoke will drop away,” says Hale Dwoskin, CEO and director of training of Sedona Training Associates. Another part of ensuring you don’t go back to smoking has to do with identifying the positive feelings you got from cigarettes, then getting these positive feelings without them. “Notice what you think you will get from smoking and then give it to yourself directly. In other words if you think the cigarette will help you to relax, take a deep breath and allow yourself to relax right now,” Dwoskin says. “By breaking the association you have with smoking and recognizing that you can give yourself whatever you think you will get from smoking, you weaken your desire to smoke. We have the ability to generate whatever feeling state we want from the inside out.” Source The American Heart Association
http://www.americanheart.org/ Medical News Today
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=56718
| 
