GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a community support diary for Kossacks in the midst of quitting smoking. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are quitting or thinking of quitting, please -- join us! We kindly ask that politics be left out.
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It's Halloween, a night for officially sanctioned tricks and treats, and so both were on my mind today.
We tend not to like the former, whether it's Mother Nature (with an assist from her tricksy pal Global Warming) upending lives and wreaking havoc on a grand scale as with Hurricane Sandy, pervasive and damaging ones like the ones Fox News and their ilk want to play on a largely unsuspecting public, or even the mundane, everyday little ones like having your house covered in eggs or toilet paper or your jack-o-lantern smashed to bits.
Treats, on the other hand...well, most of us can't get enough of those. We like treats. We use them to reward ourselves for all manner of things, from major triumphs to insignificant little personal victories. Our brains are hard-wired to find pleasure in rewards and treats (some of us more so than others), and so we actively seek them out, applying the term to all kinds of things as we go along.
And that's okay...treats and rewards are powerful motivators and can be very helpful to the behavior modification process. The "carrot on the stick" works for a lot of us, especially those who are goal-oriented. For those of us who haven't gotten past the mindset of feeling deprived (instead of making a conscious behavioral change), finding rewards to provide some sense of counterbalance to the feeling of loss can be critical to our eventual success.
For some of us, though, the concept of "treat" extends to not-so-good-for-us things, things we label "treats" but are actually doing us harm. Yeah, you know where I'm going with this. Not for nothin' did I used to refer to my cigarettes as "smoky little treats," and those things weren't doing me a damn bit of good. Objectively, they're pretty much the opposite of treat, with their cost, negative impact on health, and that whole "powerfully addictive substance" thing, but somehow that gets lost after years of framing them as the reward you get when you get through [insert unpleasant or stressful task here].
So when we do quit, and begin the process of "unlearning" old patterns of behavior, we have to be careful to redefine the concept of "treat" and then learn to choose our treats wisely. Some part of our brains stubbornly cling to the concept of smoke = reward. Our tricksy brains also try to convince us that "just one" won't hurt, and unfortunately, there are usually current smokers around who are more than happy to let us bum one. Don't listen to your Inner Trickster: that is no treat.
Instead, find yourself some REAL treats and rewards; things that won't cost you so much (literally and health-wise). Maybe it's doing something that's genuinely self-nurturing, like tending to your health by working out or meditating, treating yourself to a salon visit, or spending quality time with your favorite friends, family, or four-legged critters. Maybe it's something a little less tangible: cutting yourself a little slack, being kind to yourself, forgiving yourself or others.
And yeah, maybe it's sneaking a handful of fun-sized Snickers bars from the candy bowl tonight as you wait for trick-or-treaters. Nobody's perfect.
Who's your little buddy?
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