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The difference between fending off pain and fending off smoking

JonesCarpeDiem
0 5 3

I have recently been in severe (jaw aching) dental pain for 11 days before the offending tooth was extracted.

My observations as follows:

We tend to be able to fend off pain by telling ourselves it doesn't exist and attempting to ignore it in that way.  This actually works, for awhile. LOLOL

However,  at the end of the day when you are still in pain and you are tired of trying to block it out with your mind, it starts hurting like hell.

My point is, when you've quit, and you reach that month point and feel fully successful (out of pain) and then that pain unexpectedly comes back at you in no mans land,

YOU CAN TURN IT OFF WITH SELF TALK and the other tools you've learned to stay quit with.

YOU CAN NOT TURN OFF DENTAL PAIN!

Smoking is always a choice. You've proven it by getting to the point you are in your quit.

Keep Unchoosing it!

5 Comments
About the Author
Hello, My name is Dale. I was quit 18 months before joining this site and had participated on another site during that time. I learned a lot there and brought it with me. I joined this site the first week of August 2008. I didn't pressure myself to quit. HOW I QUIT I didn't count, I didn't deny myself to get started. When I considered quitting (at a friends request to influence his brother to quit), I simply told myself to wait a little longer. No denial, nothing painful. After 4 weeks I was down to 5 cigarettes from a pack a day. The strength came from proving to myself, I didn't need to smoke because I normally would have smoked. Simple yes? I bought the patch. I forgot to put one on on the 4th day. I needed it the next day but the following week I forgot two days in a row I put one in my wallet with a promise to myself that I would slap it on and wait an hour rather than smoke. It rode in my wallet my first year.There's nothing keeping any of you from doing this. It doesn't cost a dime. This is about unlearning something you've done for a long time. The nicotine isn't the hard part. Disconnecting from the psychological pull, the memories and connected emotions is. :-) Time is the healer.