When Disaster Strikes
Coping with Stress Due to Trauma Smoke Free
By Terry Martin, About.com
Updated: December 29, 2005
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by our Medical Review Board
The magnitude of Hurricane Katrina has changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people forever. The devastation is heartbreaking and extremely stressful. From broken homes and families to soaring gas prices and shortages, we’ll all be feeling the repercussions of this disaster for a long time to come. My heart goes out to those who have suffered such tremendous loss.
Emotional effects from large scale traumatic events can put a person’s quit program in jeopardy. As smokers, we always treated stress by lighting up. We used nicotine to calm us. We thought it helped us deal with difficult issues more efficiently. We were wrong of course, but we believed it so strongly and self-medicated with nicotine so often, the response became ingrained. Significant stress can bring urges to smoke up to the surface, even for those of us with a lot of smoke free time under our belts.
If you find yourself craving a cigarette as a result of tension over recent events, use the following tips to help you stay on track with your quit smoking program.
Coping with Trauma Smoke Free:
* Seek support. Spend time with family and friends. Share your feelings and concerns openly, and let others help you cope. We all feel better when we support one another.
* For online support around the clock, visit the Smoking Cessation Forum here at About.com. This very active community of people quitting tobacco offers outstanding support and camaraderie that has helped thousands of people quit smoking successfully for the long term.
* Get back to life as usual if you’re able to. Routine can be soothing to raw nerves.
* Revisit your list of reasons to quit smoking. They are no less true today than they were before the traumatic event.
* Get enough rest. Lack of sleep increases stress and compromises your ability to maintain smobriety. If you’re suffering from insomnia, try some of these tips to help you get some sleep.
* Recognize rationalizations. If you’re engaging in elaborate mental somersaults trying to justify why you should smoke, you’re stuck in junkie thinking. Pay attention to your thoughts – don’t let yourself stray into dangerous territory.
* Reward yourself. Declare TODAY as a milestone in your recovery from nicotine addiction and do something nice for yourself. Acknowledge the value of what you’re doing to free yourself from this deadly habit.
* Get some exercise. Go for a walk and burn off some of that stress you’re feeling. Not only is it good for you, but exercise is a great way to bust cravings.
* Focus on TODAY. Set small goals and you won’t feel out of control. Don’t worry about never being able to smoke again. Think about the day you have in front of you and resolve to make it smoke free. Baby steps! Don’t let tomorrow intimidate you today.
* Honor your grief. Take the time you need to cry and mourn the loss you feel. Rather than push aside the enormity of what has happened, let feelings flow as they come and deal with them, one at a time. It will help you recover more quickly.
* Use distraction to help you cope with individual urges as they arise. Most urges to smoke are 5 minutes or less in length. If you can find enjoyable ways to take a mental detour, you'll be able to diffuse cravings before they have a chance to grow.
* Get away from it all. Take a break from the TV news for awhile. Go to a movie or immerse yourself in a good book.
Smoking won’t make anything in your life better. It won’t relieve stress, and it won’t fix problems. Urges to smoke as a result of stressful situations can and will happen occasionally as you recover from this addiction. We spent many years smoking, and it only makes sense that events, especially those which produce dramatic emotional responses will also bring about thoughts of smoking. It doesn’t mean you need to smoke, and it doesn’t mean you’re going to fail. It simply means you have triggered an old way of responding to stress.
Each time you navigate your way through stress smoke free, choosing options other than smoking to deal with your tension, you’re working to reprogram old habits and responses. Give yourself time and smoking will lose its power to attract, even in the most difficult of circumstances. Remember, cravings to smoke are not commands. They’re only thoughts. You don’t have to act on them.
Don’t let hard times reawaken the addict within. Honor the precious gift that life is by doing all you can to nurture your own.
MY THOUGHTS
I was trying to avoid this topic. But what better way to educate oneself. For me, smoking is the hardest habit to break. I have no excuses. I just have no discipline. But if I know, if I pray about it, God will help me. So I'm praying right now for the desire to obey my Maker, more than anything else.
Showing posts with label smoking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smoking. Show all posts
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
"bad" stress relievers
Unhealthy Responses to Stress and How These Bad Habits Affect You
Here Are 5 Of The Most Common Bad Habits:
By Elizabeth Scott, M.S., About.com
Updated: December 31, 2008
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board
If you tend to deal with stress in less-than-healthy ways, you are compounding the negative impacts of stress on your health by exacerbating the stress levels and creating new problems in your life and health. The following are some common unhealthy ways of coping with stress, along with some of the negative effects of each, and ideas on how to curb or change the bad habit itself or lessen its impact.
Bad Habit #1 - Consuming Too Much Caffeine:
Multitudes of people enjoy a daily caffeine intake, as evidenced by the extreme popularity of Starbucks and other coffee houses. And while the occasional coffee isn’t going to do you great harm, it’s important to remember that caffeine is, in fact, a drug, and it’s possible to have a full-blown caffeine addiction. More likely and common, however, is caffeine dependence, where people use caffeine to jump-start their energy in the morning, use it throughout the day to stave off a ‘caffeine crash’, and then find their sleep disturbed by caffeine, causing them to wake up tired and need the caffeine jolt to get going again the next day. As the cycle continues, caffeine affects stress levels as well. If this sounds a little too familiar, here are some resources to help kick the caffeine habit.
Bad Habit #2 -Smoking:
For smokers, a cigarette can feel like a good stress reliever. In fact, during times of stress, a cigarette feels almost necessary, and quitting the habit can seem virtually impossible. (Due in part to physical addiction and in part to habit and other social and lifestyle factors, it’s been said that quitting smoking is as difficult as quitting heroin!) Unfortunately, we all know that cigarettes can be costly—financially speaking and especially health-wise—and because smoking creates much more stress than it alleviates, it’s more than worth it to kick the habit. For help, visit the Smoking Section of the Unhealthy Behaviors resource category on this site.
Bad Habit #3 -Drinking In Excess:
Many people find that a glass of wine can be a good way to unwind at the end of a stressful day, and most physicians and researchers agree, citing studies that show that red wine has benefits for heart health. However, drinking can be a slippery slope, as excessive drinking can cause problems in virtually every area of a person’s life, causing much more stress in the long run. If you are one who has trouble limiting alcohol consumption to one or two drinks, and even if you can drink very moderately, but find that this is your only regular stress management practice, it would likely be in your best interest to pursue other forms of stress relief. For more on alcohol consumption, see the Alcohol Section of the Unhealthy Behaviors resource category. For additional ideas on stress relief practices, here’s a long and varied list of stress relievers.
Bad Habit #4 -Compulsive Spending:
People have many ways of relieving stress or of filling a void inside themselves. While buying yourself a nice gift once in a while can be a nice pick-me-up, and an effective self care strategy, compulsively buying things to relieve stress or feel good about yourself, spending money you don’t have on things you don’t need, can only cause more financial stress in the long run, and cause feelings of shame, a cluttered home, and add to the stress you were trying to alleviate.
Bad Habit #5 -Emotional Eating:
Most of us let our friends Ben & Jerry help us reduce stress with ice cream on occasion (or at least most of the people who took this poll on emotional eating said they did), but if eating the wrong things becomes a main coping mechanism for stress, it can lead to compromised health, excessive weight, and additional stress stemming from these effects. A poor diet can cause additional stress also by leading to blood sugar imbalances that make stressful situations seem more overwhelming. If you find that stress leads to poor dietary habits because of emotional eating, or for other reasons (like you’re just too busy to cook healthy dinners at home), you can learn to adapt healthier eating habits with these resources.
Additional unhealthy responses and bad habits include self sabotage and lashing out at others, working to the point that you live an imbalanced lifestyle, and other things. For more help with bad habits and mild to moderately unhealthy responses to stress, visit the Unealthy Behaviors section, read the Stress Relief Game Plan, and take the free e-course on Living a Low Stress Lifestyle. I also highly recommend this article on maintaining healthy habits!
MY THOUGHTS
Stress relief strategies can indeed lead to more stress - if you're using the wrong
techniques. Caffeine causes insomnia and lack of sleep adds up to stress since your human systems failed to regenerate. Smoking (ouch) clouds your thoughts, causes headache and leads to more health problems. When you drink, you tend to forget the stressors for awhile but that's about it. You wake up with a humongous hangover and you get more stressed trying to remember what crazy things you did while intoxicated. Well, uncontrolled eating, we all know where that would lead us. And a sure fire way to get more stressed. Eating is definetely a no-no when you're trying to relieve stress. Now,shopping! This doesn't seem harmful does it? especially if you have tons of money. But when we buy what we don't need and buy what we can't afford then we're in big trouble. First, because the extra, unnecesary, unplanned
expense will catch up with us. But more importantly, unwise spending is not a good
stewardship. In truth, all of these "bad" stress relievers are "bad" examples of
stewardship. Everything we have are God's gifts and we were commanded to take care of everything we own. The best stress reliever of all is to pray - constantly, unceasingly. Who else can give us comfort from stress but the One who loves us the most.
Here Are 5 Of The Most Common Bad Habits:
By Elizabeth Scott, M.S., About.com
Updated: December 31, 2008
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board
If you tend to deal with stress in less-than-healthy ways, you are compounding the negative impacts of stress on your health by exacerbating the stress levels and creating new problems in your life and health. The following are some common unhealthy ways of coping with stress, along with some of the negative effects of each, and ideas on how to curb or change the bad habit itself or lessen its impact.
Bad Habit #1 - Consuming Too Much Caffeine:
Multitudes of people enjoy a daily caffeine intake, as evidenced by the extreme popularity of Starbucks and other coffee houses. And while the occasional coffee isn’t going to do you great harm, it’s important to remember that caffeine is, in fact, a drug, and it’s possible to have a full-blown caffeine addiction. More likely and common, however, is caffeine dependence, where people use caffeine to jump-start their energy in the morning, use it throughout the day to stave off a ‘caffeine crash’, and then find their sleep disturbed by caffeine, causing them to wake up tired and need the caffeine jolt to get going again the next day. As the cycle continues, caffeine affects stress levels as well. If this sounds a little too familiar, here are some resources to help kick the caffeine habit.
Bad Habit #2 -Smoking:
For smokers, a cigarette can feel like a good stress reliever. In fact, during times of stress, a cigarette feels almost necessary, and quitting the habit can seem virtually impossible. (Due in part to physical addiction and in part to habit and other social and lifestyle factors, it’s been said that quitting smoking is as difficult as quitting heroin!) Unfortunately, we all know that cigarettes can be costly—financially speaking and especially health-wise—and because smoking creates much more stress than it alleviates, it’s more than worth it to kick the habit. For help, visit the Smoking Section of the Unhealthy Behaviors resource category on this site.
Bad Habit #3 -Drinking In Excess:
Many people find that a glass of wine can be a good way to unwind at the end of a stressful day, and most physicians and researchers agree, citing studies that show that red wine has benefits for heart health. However, drinking can be a slippery slope, as excessive drinking can cause problems in virtually every area of a person’s life, causing much more stress in the long run. If you are one who has trouble limiting alcohol consumption to one or two drinks, and even if you can drink very moderately, but find that this is your only regular stress management practice, it would likely be in your best interest to pursue other forms of stress relief. For more on alcohol consumption, see the Alcohol Section of the Unhealthy Behaviors resource category. For additional ideas on stress relief practices, here’s a long and varied list of stress relievers.
Bad Habit #4 -Compulsive Spending:
People have many ways of relieving stress or of filling a void inside themselves. While buying yourself a nice gift once in a while can be a nice pick-me-up, and an effective self care strategy, compulsively buying things to relieve stress or feel good about yourself, spending money you don’t have on things you don’t need, can only cause more financial stress in the long run, and cause feelings of shame, a cluttered home, and add to the stress you were trying to alleviate.
Bad Habit #5 -Emotional Eating:
Most of us let our friends Ben & Jerry help us reduce stress with ice cream on occasion (or at least most of the people who took this poll on emotional eating said they did), but if eating the wrong things becomes a main coping mechanism for stress, it can lead to compromised health, excessive weight, and additional stress stemming from these effects. A poor diet can cause additional stress also by leading to blood sugar imbalances that make stressful situations seem more overwhelming. If you find that stress leads to poor dietary habits because of emotional eating, or for other reasons (like you’re just too busy to cook healthy dinners at home), you can learn to adapt healthier eating habits with these resources.
Additional unhealthy responses and bad habits include self sabotage and lashing out at others, working to the point that you live an imbalanced lifestyle, and other things. For more help with bad habits and mild to moderately unhealthy responses to stress, visit the Unealthy Behaviors section, read the Stress Relief Game Plan, and take the free e-course on Living a Low Stress Lifestyle. I also highly recommend this article on maintaining healthy habits!
MY THOUGHTS
Stress relief strategies can indeed lead to more stress - if you're using the wrong
techniques. Caffeine causes insomnia and lack of sleep adds up to stress since your human systems failed to regenerate. Smoking (ouch) clouds your thoughts, causes headache and leads to more health problems. When you drink, you tend to forget the stressors for awhile but that's about it. You wake up with a humongous hangover and you get more stressed trying to remember what crazy things you did while intoxicated. Well, uncontrolled eating, we all know where that would lead us. And a sure fire way to get more stressed. Eating is definetely a no-no when you're trying to relieve stress. Now,shopping! This doesn't seem harmful does it? especially if you have tons of money. But when we buy what we don't need and buy what we can't afford then we're in big trouble. First, because the extra, unnecesary, unplanned
expense will catch up with us. But more importantly, unwise spending is not a good
stewardship. In truth, all of these "bad" stress relievers are "bad" examples of
stewardship. Everything we have are God's gifts and we were commanded to take care of everything we own. The best stress reliever of all is to pray - constantly, unceasingly. Who else can give us comfort from stress but the One who loves us the most.
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