Good morning Exer's!! Life must be good because we're living it!!
I was giving some thought to the triggers and urges that we all must face when we quit smoking. The two little items just happen to be right at the center of the entire quit. If it weren't for those triggers and urges, I think anybody could quit smoking.
To me, a trigger is a life event that reminds us of smoking. This is where we ourselves create an unpleasant situation simply by not only remembering but allowing ourselves to almost savor the memory of our past lives as smokers.
And then there's the urges. This is a more physical manifestation. I believe that it comes from a part of the brain that doesn't know right from wrong. A part of the brain that reacts to stimulation such as nicotine. This part of the brain sends those signals out for us to smoke on a regular basis. Again, it is a stimulation or reflexive type of feeling, at least for me.
I think it's the part of the brain that creates urges that is the true essence of the addict within. This is the screaming little child that must be trained in order to find peace because as long as the addict within continues to scream at us in very physical ways, then how can we find calm? How can we see past the noise of our addictions in order to feel that freedom?
At times I think that we add even more trauma to our quits when we get an urge because we tend to see it as a weakness within ourselves rather then the mental impulse that it really is. We then begin to analyze why we still feel the urge to smoke months after we've already quit. And because we do this, it at times makes us angry not only at ourselves but at the entire situation of quitting. Some even go as far as to believe that there will never be a calm. There will never be freedom.
But the reality is that this is thinking out of frustration. We want so badly to taste that freedom and yet it seems like we're our own worst enemy. At times we even question our resolve simply because the discomforts of losing an addiction can seem so endless. It just seems easier to give in. But it doesn't really have to be that way.
We have to remember at all times that these urges are short little bursts or impulses that our brain produces just as it did when we actually smoked. But this is where the problem can arise. If we grab hold of that impulse and allow it to enter into the forefront of the mind, then it becomes more then a simple impulse. I think we, (usually without realizing it) grab on to that impulse and attach to it a mental desire to smoke.
This in turn makes the situation so much worse! I think the reality is that once we understand that these are quick little impulses and treat them as such then things get easier. This is when we can see through our own mask of addiction. This is when we can see the freedom looming just over the horizon. This is when we can get back to the business of taking our lives back.
So I guess what I'm trying to convey here is that though we will all feel those urges. Though we will always try to understand and be ready for our triggers. Though each battle seems like an uphill battle, in the end we do win the entire war.
There really is freedom out there my friends. There really is hope for a new life. That hope started the day we decided to quit and slid that thought past our own addictions to make it a reality. And that hope grew with each shackle of addiction that we removed from ourselves very carefully and one at a time until there were hardly any left.
Sure, it's a process and one that most find unpleasant. But it's a doable process so long as we stick to the fact that we love life. We love freedom. And most importantly, we're here to fight for that freedom! We're here to take back our lives! We're here not because we have to be but rather because we WANT to be!!
ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!
