DEALING WITH PAIN

When I use the word pain in this site I am referring not just to physical pain, ie., the type that makes you go “ow”, but also to psychological pain. Pain that includes anger, jealousy, grief, despair, loneliness, guilt, resentment, fear, sadness, depression and hate. These forms of emotional pain are the ones most likely to weaken your initial resolve to stop smoking and create for you, through that little ‘voice’, the excuse you need (or more accurately, want) to start smoking again.

Why do you need to examine pain?

The answer to this question is that each of us has a pain threshold that is unique to ourselves. This threshold is partly established at birth and partly acquired by our experiences as we go through life. Once this threshold has been exceeded, we will allow ourselves to operate outside the normal boundaries of our personalities.

For example, most of us has at some time or another promised to keep a secret and have been strong in our resolve. Had this resolve been threatened by physical or emotional pain however, it may soon have crumbled. The likelihood of you keeping a secret will always be in direct relation to the amount of pain that you have to endure. If you were being asked to tell your secret by someone who was giving you gentle slaps on the back of your hand for a period of ten minutes, you would probably have little or no difficulty in keeping quiet

If, however, you were being burnt at regular intervals with red hot pokers over a period of weeks, it is extremely likely that you would tell your torturers whatever they wanted to know, (and probably a whole lot more!) and to hell with your original resolve!

An extreme example, granted, but it does clearly illustrate the link between pain, and failure to keep a resolution. If you view this pain / failure link in the context of stopping smoking, then it becomes clear that in order to increase your chances of staying stopped, you will need to look at how you can reduce all the areas of pain and potential pain in your life. Let’s start now by
taking a look at pain itself. Pain is one of the areas in your life where your little ‘voice’ has a lot of control and when you stop smoking your little ‘voice’ will steer you towards focusing on any emotional or physical pain that you might have.

It will try to convince you that this pain is almost unbearable and of course that the pain is there because you are not smoking and therefore you should have a smoke! (Just the one of course!) Back in the land of reality it transpires that almost every day brings some level of emotional or physical pain for most people.

Perhaps in the form of a headache, or a row at the office, or a final demand from the gas board. Perhaps a disagreement with your mother, or a touch of arthritis, or a bad cold. Maybe a sleepless night or a pulled muscle. It could be an embarrassing Freudian slip, or a wasp sting or, a bad report from your daughters school. Perhaps a whisper about job losses at your factory, or a missed promotion - and so on and so on. This list is but a very small sample of all the potential areas for pain in your

life and it could be extended almost indefinitely. It is sad but unfortunately true, that for most of us, a lot of the time, life can be quite painful in one way or another. Stopping smoking will not make life any tougher, but at the start it will make you feel a little more vulnerable. This in turn will make you suddenly focus on all this negative everyday pain. Once again your little ‘voice’ will step in and it will try to tell you that life wasn’t this tough before you stopped smoking. Of course it was - most of the time you simply didn’t notice!

Now then, how can all this information can be of use to you?

If you become aware of the fact that you are going to be feeling a little vulnerable for a short period of time, then you are going to be in a much better position to be able to deal effectively with any pain that comes your way, without having to resort to smoking.

Let’s look again at one of the prices that you earlier agreed to pay:You said that you were prepared to feel at least some pain. That’s good, because when you start to feel some withdrawal discomfort, (which you will) you do not have to panic, get things out of perspective, and end up
smoking. You can simply monitor your discomfort and tell yourself that:

THIS DISCOMFORT IS THE PRICE I HAVE AGREED TO PAY TO BECOME A NON SMOKER.
Once you have agreed that you are prepared to tolerate a little discomfort, you will find that you can effectively manage this discomfort by using the techniques put forward later on in this book. You can further lessen your pain by learning to view it from outside the context of that little ‘voice’. That ‘voice’ will be telling you all the time that your discomfort is unbearable and that you would be better off smoking. The pain however, is not at all unbearable, but for the most part it is an illusion created by the little ‘voice’ of your unconscious. You can actually measure your discomfort by comparing your feelings to a simple pain strength table.

Before using the following table, complete a head to to be scan of yourself in order to monitor how much pain you are in.

Here’s how to do it. When you first feel the pangs of withdrawal ask yourself what exactly it is that you are feeling.

The following is a list of commonly reported symptoms of nicotine withdrawal and it is very likely that your symptoms will be amongst them.

A FEELING OF ‘EMPTINESS’ IN THE CHEST

A FEELING OF HUNGER

A FEELING OF TIREDNESS

A HEADACHE

A DRY MOUTH

A CONFUSED FEELING

A TENDENCY TOWARDS IRRITABILITY

A FEELING OF HELPLESSNESS OR WEAKNESS

These symptoms make up the bulk of the feelings you may experience as part of your withdrawal. In addition, because we are all so unique in our physical and psychological construction, you may of course feel symptoms other than those mentioned here. Also, because of our uniqueness these symptoms will be felt by each person to a different degree, so if you happen to be one of the lucky ones, they may present you with absolutely no difficulty at all. However, if you are like most people you will probably feel one or more of these symptoms and when you do, you can compare each one to the following table:

1 NO PAIN AT ALL

2 ALMOST NO PAIN

3 A LITTLE PAIN

4 PAINFUL

5 VERY PAINFUL

6 EXTREMELY PAINFUL

7 ABSOLUTELY UNBEARABLE

Here’s how to use the body check and pain strength table:

OK, say for example that you stopped smoking two hours ago and you begin to feel the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. What should you do?

The first thing you need to do is to complete the head to toe body check to see exactly where the problem lies. A typical body check would be something like this:

HEAD - A bit sore.

NECK - OK.

ARMS - OK.

CHEST - A very empty, hollow sort of feeling.

ABDOMEN - A kind of hungry feeling.
LEGS - A tired feeling and a bit shaky

FEET - OK.

MENTAL STATE - A bit confused and a bit angry, feeling a little panicky.

Now, what you need to do is to take each symptom separately and compare it to the pain strength table. I can absolutely guarantee that once you think honestly about it, you will be surprised at just how low you register each symptom on this table. For instance, one of the most
common withdrawal symptoms that leads to failure is that feeling of ‘emptiness’ in the chest. If you are unaware of the tricks of your little ‘voice’ and have not thought consciously about just how bad this discomfort really is, then in no time at all you can lose the true perspective, start to believe that you are in agony, and throw in the towel.

If, however, you do have an awareness of this little ‘voice’s’ tendency to make you focus on your symptoms, and you look at your pain realistically, (by means of the body scan and pain chart) you will soon discover that the pain really is for the most part an illusion. You may well find that what at first appears to be a vast, unbearable emptiness raging within your lungs, when critically examined, turns out in fact to be nothing more unpleasant than a feeling similar to hunger, or, perhaps, like a slight pressure on your sternum.

This illusory effect applies to all of your symptoms and all you need to do to overcome this illusion is to think about each symptom as it occurs, and measure it on the pain chart in order to see it for what it really is.

If you do this exercise as honestly as possible, you will find that you rarely encounter a pain or discomfort that registers above ‘a bit painful’.

If this turns out to be your experience, as is likely, then you will be depriving your little ‘voice’ of the central focus of its power. That is, the illusion that you are in so much discomfort that you should start smoking again.

If, however, you are one of the few individuals who have an exceptionally low tolerance for discomfort, (and of course your little ‘voice’ will no doubt try to convince you that you have the lowest pain threshold of anyone who ever lived!) then fear not, for all is not lost! If you discover in assessing your pain honestly, that you are continually registering in the very painful or unbearable areas of the pain level chart, then you still have a few options open to you. First of all it is important to know this:

NICOTINE CRAVING COMES IN BURSTS OF THREE TO FIVE MINUTES.

Now, I don’t care how unbearable you think your cravings are because there is almost no one who, if they are serious about stopping smoking, cannot tolerate three to five minutes of pain or discomfort at a time. Let’s face it, we are not talking about being run through with
flaming swords, we are talking primarily about feeling ‘empty’ or ‘hungry’ or having a bit of a headache.

Furthermore, not only do the cravings come in bursts of three to five minutes, but as time wears on these attacks become less and less frequent and also less intense. What this means to you is that if you can get over the first few days, your task will become progressively easier.

Remember that it is not going to be a totally pain free ride, but you have agreed to pay the price of at least some pain!

Finally, in this section here is some further advice for those who need even more assistance to deal with these early stages of withdrawal.
Keep in your mind the following saying for when the going gets rough. It is a saying used by recovering addicts and alcoholics all over the world, when they feel that they are starting to waver. The saying is simply this:

“THIS TOO, SHALL PASS”

You will find that the bad times always pass. You also now know that it is not always going to be tough, just every now and again and for short periods. Always remember that after the first few days, with each passing hour, you are getting further and further away from your addiction and its symptoms, and continually closer to being a symptom free non smoker.

The final tool to be discussed here is also one used by recovering addicts and alcoholics the world over. They use this when they find staying abstinent difficult . It is an expression that most of you will have heard before and it is this:

“ONE DAY AT A TIME”

This method has proved its worth time and time again and it works like this:

When you feel yourself starting to struggle and your little ‘voice’ seems to be operating on overdrive, tell yourself that:

“NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS I WILL NOT SMOKE FOR TWENTY FOUR HOURS”

At first glance this might seem like a license to smoke after twenty four hours, but of course it doesn’t quite work like that. First of all, after twenty four hours you may not be in such a negative mood, or you may no longer be feeling any withdrawal symptoms and, therefore, might
not want to smoke. Furthermore, all you have to do at the end of twenty four hours is to make another resolution not to smoke for the next twenty four hours.

At first glance this may seem to be a bit daft, but on closer examination it makes a lot of sense. Many of us could tolerate things for twenty four hours that would seem impossible to consider for a lifetime. If you put yourself in the position where no matter what happens you will not smoke for the next twenty four hours, then soon enough you will have strung together enough days to take you far enough away from your Withdrawal to allow you to succeed.

First of all, you learned that there are different types of pain and that each of us has a different pain threshold. You then explored the link between excessive pain and starting smoking again, and how that little ‘voice’ will try to force you to focus intensely on everyday pain, with a view to weakening you to the point of smoking. Next, you were reminded that you had agreed to tolerate at least a little discomfort in the short term and how to actually lessen any discomfort by getting things into perspective. You were shown how to do this by completing a simple body scan, and comparing your symptoms to a pain level chart, where you discovered that your pain is nowhere near as severe as you first thought.

If you discovered that you still couldn’t tolerate the discomfort, you then learned that the actual cravings only ever became really intense for periods of between three and five minutes, and that you could deal with this inconvenience by the knowledge that it would soon pass, because it always does. You also learned that you could tolerate the milder cravings which are often present by agreeing to accept them as part of the price for becoming a non smoker and by living ‘just for today.’