This is a quick help that you can any time come back to while in the process of giving up smoking. With the below, you can HOLD YOURSELF in the process by observing&releasing your thoughts and emotions as you are going through them. This can make all the difference in success.

When you give up smoking, the thoughts and feelings that your smoking is meant to suppress will surface or strengthen. There are two lists below. The first one is the thoughts and feelings that you want to have. The second list is the feelings and thoughts that come up when you quit smoking – the unwanted, painful, suppressed ones. If it makes sense for you: The first list is the feelings and thoughts that you want your suppressed feelings to be replaced with, and the second list is the ones that you are letting go of. 

The thoughts and feelings can certainly be different, I am listing here those that usually come up with most of us. So make your own list if that helps. (Or bookmark this page if it is good enough. It will come in handy.)

What I want

• I want to feel my self-worth.
• I want to know that I can do whatever I want with my life. I don’t have to set strange limits for my own life.
• I want to feel proud.
• I want to be my True Self. Fully. The most liberating feeling.
• I want to realize that I have not done anything wrong. 
• I want to realize that there is nothing wrong with me. And thus I don’t need to be fixed.
• I want to be active and not care about my actions too much.
• I want to feel strong.
• I want to help people to be less ashamed and anxious. 

What I don’t want to feel or think

• “I have done something wrong and there is a problem. Something is my fault.”
• “I feel lonely.”
• “I am in a panic.”
• “People are so stupid and careless around me.”
• “I feel depressed, or sad because I have a sense of loss inside. I should have gotten something or something should have happened but it didn’t.”
• “I feel empty inside. No connection to anyone or anything. (And now I have lost connection to my cigarette too.)”

Notes:

• Quitting smoking is all mental. 
• Remember: Nobody ever got harmed by releasing their suppressed emotions. 
• The more, deeper you allow yourself to feel your suppressed feelings, the faster you will go through them. 
• Anger is absolutely one of the main feelings that most of us have when quitting smoking. When it hits you, make sure you do not harm yourself or others. 
• Much of our suppressed emotions are in our bodies. For example, crying and shaking are healthy and very effective. 
• It is ok if you become inactive in the beginning. Just let yourself go through it at your own pace. 
• Do not try to ‘guess’ what feelings and thoughts will come. And do not try to control them.   
• It is ok if you don’t know what you are feeling, or why you are feeling the way you do.
• Do not exchange your smoking for another addiction! 
• If you are determined, that is probably more than half the battle. (Just an idea: If you become undetermined along the way then ask yourself why? Why do you want to stay dependent? What is it that you lack and find that your dependence will give you?)

Just like with the quick help for self-observation, I am not using bold, or too large letters should you need to open this page in a public place where it is not good if anyone sees what you are reading.

The strange thing about fear and time is that fear only exists in the past and in the future in my mind. How cool is this?: Any time I am able to truly be in the present (I personally use meditation) my fear is gone.Right the instant my thoughts start to wander, fear comes back sooner or later. If this is so then logic tells me that fear doesn’t exist, only my thoughts create it. Where it is less than cool – at least for me – is that I can very hardly release my fears: When I can truly observe it, get immersed in it, it is gone. And then it comes back. It is like a ghost, like a trickster.  I do have many successes, I do use many methods – like EMDR, meditation, journaling, phrasing my thoughts effectively, other trauma elimination tecniques -, but I am just not satisfied.  I guess I am between two worlds. Today I think that it has to do with decision. Which world do I decide to belong to? 

“The reason why I can’t become emotionally and mentally independent is that I am afraid I will lose my safety if I do so.” If this resonates with you then you will find two interpretations around this in this article to help you with your own self-observation.

I am bringing this fear from my childhood

The development of the self is in stages. In early life, before we get to the stage of becoming mentally and emotionally independent there are two preceding stages. They are called co-dependency and counter-dependency. As their names depict, these stages are about dependency. We are totally dependent on the outside world not only physically but more importantly emotionally and mentally. 

In these first two stages, we are dependent on our mothers, fathers, or other people who take care of us, who love us, who calm us, who mirror our feelings. This is how such highly evolved creatures like humans develop. We need the connection, the relationship. And we want to be dependent at all costs. And glitches happen in these first two stages to almost all of us. Glitches where this connection breaks (or sometimes worse). When this connection fails (speaking of neglect, abandonment, abuse, etc.) we develop fear. And all sorts of twisted beliefs and behaviors that result from this loss of connection. And our natural course of development gets blocked and we are unable to get to the next stage in our development; Independence. We need to act as independent individuals and look independent, but inside we feel that it is yet uncooked. Some of us decide to ‘forcefully grow up’ – by deciding to detach from our origins – and some of us become even more dependent. And the coping mechanisms are endless.   

So there we have it. We want to become emotionally independent and happy individuals, but we can’t. We are afraid to make that step. Our fear of losing our safety is everywhere. It is so much part of our thinking and so much in front of us that we can hardly realize it. (If it is not the fear then for most of us it is the inner image that “I still need something before I decide to become a ‘full’ individual”.) 

I am projecting my arrogance on the world around me and on God

If you look at your fear with the knowledge that you are interconnected with everything in the world and with God – or a creator or higher power; as you understand it- then the realization can be different.

Then you can come to the conclusion that your fear actually comes from your arrogance and from your mindset of thinking that you are special. The key word here is that you feel special. You feel ‘special’ as a separate and independent being and your logic in understanding the world is built from this logic. And you want to fulfill your life along this ‘logic’. If you are still reading these lines then I assume that they still resonate with you. So let’s go further.

What happens in essence is that you are afraid of God. You instinctively know that God (however you call it) exists but you are afraid that if you gave up your sense of being ‘special’ and sense of being separate would be the end for you. And there is the fear of God’s ‘behavior’. You look at God as a being who would destroy you, who would be cruel to you, who would just give you suffering, or maybe God doesn’t even exist, there is actually nothing there. This is the projection of my own arrogance on the core of my own being.  

(How much this is a different way of looking at my fear compared to the above interpretation about the ‘glitches’ in early childhood is a question. Maybe not so much. In both cases, there is a loss of connection. And that is the root cause of my fear.)  

Probably there is. Here is why. The world we live in is insane in many parts and so our mindset and thought systems got glitched too… This is the starting point. 

In order to recognize the insanity and twisted nature of the world we live in and also our twistedness we first must recognize it. This recognition is the suffering that we experience. And here is the underlying reason why suffering is needed: We are so twisted currently that we currently believe that suffering and being unhappy is normal. Phrased differently: Most of us find that suffering is needed, that it is normal.  Our Self needs this suffering – as a guide – to realize that our thinking is twisted. Once we realize that suffering is not needed it will vanish. Until then, self-development needs it.

The seemingly paradoxical image that the Self is looking at its own Self.

I realize that fear is a call for love. I understand now that fear is a call for help. The help I need is to be able to feel love.

My fear exists to help me to remember. My fear exists to be transformed into what I call for. I transform it into love. That is its job, its reason for its existence.

I will remember the next time fear hits me that it came to help me remember and transform.

I see this in others too.

“The core and most important reason why I can’t commit to things is my unconscious fear about it.” If this statement resonates then this post may be for you. This post is more a call to seize an opportunity than a “clever” analysis of why it happens.

The opportunity

It is so hard for most of us to realize that the main belief system we have is shaped by our fears. It is not an overstatement.  

This fear, which is at the core, doesn’t only apply to commitments, but to everything actually. It just usually shows itself very well at times when we need to decide and commit to something. And this is the reason why I am writing this post because by reading this, it may pop into your mind the next time you are facing a decision point and need to make a commitment of some kind.

What am I talking about here? The way to release a toxic thought (and the painful emotion that is attached to it) can be done at the very moment when it comes. So when this fear, this anxiety hits you then you have a golden opportunity to look at it consciously. It may not matter if you can consciously ‘trace it’ to something that happened to you or figure out in any other way why you have that unconscious fear. The same release can happen just by being able to look at it and examine it consciously. This is your consciousness helping you big time. Let it happen.

Tell yourself that you are going to catch it the next time it pops up. 

Here is a short article to help yourself with self-observation: Quick help for self-observation.

Another one, which is a practical guide on how to do it: When does a change happen in me?

Ideas for what may be at play

If you are the type who wants to find concretely what is behind your anxiety here is a small list of ideas as food for thought on what may be at play behind your ‘inability’ to commit. (The list could certainly go on.)

• “Not good enough” thinking 
• Toxic Shame
  • I guess it speaks for itself that when you don’t think you are good enough then you will have a hard time committing.
• Addictions
  • Addictions have a lot to do with shame and addiction can block a lot of things from happening in your life.
• Your healthy judgment
  • Let’s not rule out the possibility that you don’t commit to things because you instinctively know that those are not good for you. Then the next logical question may be: Why do you mess yourself into such situations?
• Committing to ‘too’ many things
  • Are you maybe committing to too many things? Is everything ok with your limits?

Does this resonate with you? “I can’t relax because that would mean that I had to give up my present life.”

I am trying to phrase the same thing in another way: “I am afraid to relax because then I would not know what to do.”

Maybe one step further?: “My stress keeps me together and I am afraid I would lose control if I relaxed.”

One step further?: “I can’t relax because I am afraid I would lose my consciousness.” – to me personally, this is the closest to reality. This is pretty paradoxical.

(One more: “I can’t relax because I am afraid my life would open up too much.”)

Understanding of causes and effects

Depending on how deep you go there are different understandings about the same question. 

I could have given this answer: “I can’t relax because I am stressed.”. Probably true. And then my job would be to find why I am stressed, and eliminate it. 

But the above doesn’t say this. It says the “Obstacle I have is my fear of losing my present life”. I personally believe that this understanding is one step further than the one that states that the core of my problem is my stress. Why? Because the thought “I can’t relax because that would mean that I had to give up my present life.” doesn’t state why I cannot relax but it already states what effect my inability to relax will have. And that implicitly means – there is a good probability – that you have already ‘cooked’ this question already in yourself. I know it may sound pompous.

It also explicitly means that you are already interested in the next step. And also maybe you have no problem staying in the tension that your present inability to relax causes you. 

(There is no problem in staying on a ‘higher level’ – it is not a race. Maybe that is what you need to solve what makes you suffer. But if the suffering doesn’t end, chances are there is a need to go deeper.)

Phrasing my problem and my answer to why it is happening

Note: All the above cause-and-effect reasoning may sound very logical but the thing is that insights come out of our ‘no thingness’ – our consciousness. Maybe what happens is that we are, or we become capable of receiving and understanding some things. 

Anyways. Do I need to be able to phrase my problem? We are all different so my answer is: Not necessarily verbally. Maybe in another way. But you need to express it, name it, and paint a picture in your mind. When you do that, you create an opportunity for yourself to let that thing go. Actually more than letting it go, but integrating it. You become more ‘anti-fragile’ when you process it.  

I have written a separate article about an effective method of how to phrase my problems. It is here: The strength of phrasing my problems in a short and basic way. This article also contains a useful method: What is behind my constant restlessness? 

The work to be done

We all wish it was so easy to become conscious about a problem without much labor. I singlehandedly figured out that until this happens, there is hard work to be done…

The above is just one idea of why you may have a hard time relaxing. So here are some other starting points. I am putting in some links to other articles on Self Chatter as to a large extent this site is about understanding ourselves. 

Fear, anxiety

It sounds obvious and this is why it is important. My experience shows that I just simply miss the ‘obvious’ in trying to figure out why I can’t relax and why my thoughts are constantly racing. 

Am I in some form of panic?

Am I afraid of losing my safety?

Hustle culture

Today’s culture demands us to always be on the edge. We do not necessarily have to have any personal challenges in our life; It is all too easy to fall victim to the hustle culture around us.  

Confusion

I find that this is important. I believe that one of the leading causes of why we can hardly relax comes from our confusion. It is so easy to overlook that “My main problem is that I am confused.” because – Well… Because I am confused and do not know what to do. It is like my confusion is sitting on top of everything. 

Inherited behavior, mindset

Put simply, we inherit unfinished business and behaviors. Nothing that we have ‘done’, things were just passed on to us. The main reason it is hard to connect those dots and become conscious of them is that they have been with us since childhood.

Shame, expectations towards me

Clues: Shame easily causes us to be on constant alert. Shame keeps us thinking all the time. Shame is a form of fear. 

There is a connection to the above ‘Inherited behavior, mindset’ chapter: Shame is intergenerational. 

My anger and tension because I don’t get what I want

Again, it sounds obvious. Don’t we get tense if we do not get what we want? Imagine if this need is unconscious: What if we just have a constant feeling that we are lacking something in our life but we don’t know what? Here is an article on this: I have been waiting all my life. 

“I don’t know what I want from life because somewhere along the way I got used to the idea that I cannot get what I really want.” If this thought resonates with you then this post may be valuable to you.  

I got used to going for Plan B. And somewhere along the way, this thought solidified in me. It became my mindset, my primary way of looking at my life. And I lost sight of ‘Plan A’ – which is my inner knowing of what I really want. I may have lost sight of it to the extent that I kind of don’t even remember that such a thing exists.

How and why did it happen? 

What were the steps that made me develop this behavior that I got used to going for ‘Plan B’?

First step: It happened due to some form of fear. Phrased in an elementary way: ‘I did not get what I wanted and I got scared.’

(Why didn’t this happen?: ‘I did not get what I want and I got angry.’ Actually, maybe this happened. And my anger – or maybe not my anger, but my very strong drive – helped me to push more and get what I wanted. And maybe I did have success. But the fact that I am here and reading these lines suggests that I do have a deficit.)

Next step: I did not get what I wanted and I developed a sense of loss. And as result, I got depressed and have given up. What do I mean by ‘I did not get what I wanted.’? : Take it abstractly. I had a need that was not met. This need may be unconscious. It doesn’t need to be something physical (I believe it usually isn’t), or also it can be something that I wanted more of but did not get enough.

Next step: I developed the belief that ‘I just cannot get what I really want. This is my life.’ This became my reality. Why did I form this belief? I formed this as my coping mechanism. We need to cope and make sense of the world.

(Imagine that you already had a strong and developed self when those experiences happened to you. Chances are that your belief – your conclusion about what has happened to you – would be closer to something like this: ‘This sucks but I understand that I cannot always get what I want. But there is nothing wrong with me. I will change my behavior and situation so that I can get what I want.’ (Strangely, I think it can also be that I got too much of something that I did not want. And after all, it had the same effect because I could not ‘identify’ with what I got (‘This is not what I want and it is not a substitute.’). )

Next step: Since this is my belief about my life, the world around me is ‘mirroring’ this mindset back to me. I see things through this lens and gravitate toward such situations. 

The hiding places of this belief

Just ideas. I am only listing painful things to trigger self-observation and I am sorry. I am doing it with the best intentions.

I am a people pleaser and act as a very empathic person

Since I have a sense of lack I develop this tactic to get what I want – which will inevitably lead to ‘Plan B’. Perhaps the unhealthy opposite of narcissism. 

I criticize almost everything

It is hard for me not to criticize – since I am on ‘Plan B’ usually. A way of coping.

I do not stay in relationships, I may be a job hopper

I think that this is a way of coping – an attempt to ‘escape’, and change my situation for the better. There is some good news here: I act, I am looking for a change, I am looking for my way out. A big difference compared to being muted and still.

I have low self-confidence; I may overreact to things more than average; ‘I feel like waiting all my life’, prone to depression, etc.

The list could go on. A sense of loss can result in a thousand ways of suffering.

Bottom line: The reason why I don’t know what I want is because there is something blocking it. I believe that this block is this sense of lack most of the time.

The good news

There is nothing wrong with you! You picked up some behaviors that helped you in the past but they do not anymore. That’s it. If you are a little bit like most of us then you developed a belief that helped you to cope and make sense of things. The fact that you are reading these lines is probably a strong indication that you are already processing your sense of loss and letting it go – This makes all the difference!

As you realize your own self-worth more, you will go less and less for things that you don’t want actually. This will be intoxicating.

In my experience I do not look for what I want; It comes automatically and from a healthy sense of self-confidence.

Hidden in the good news is a bit of work needed maybe: Even if it is understandable that I developed this mindset that I automatically go for ‘Plan B’, it is still my behavior; I am doing it. It takes a high level of courage to realize that ‘S..t, I am doing this, not someone else…’ When I get to this realization, it is an indication that I am on the other side of this already.

What works for me

1. When I understand this: It doesn’t matter that I don’t know what I want. What matters is how I want to feel and think. Maybe in other words: My job with myself is to create the circumstances in me so that it reveals itself. 
2. When I catch myself that again I am automatically going for ‘Plan B’.
3. And when I realize that it doesn’t have to be this way.

• • • Fear

    • Shame

    • Anger

    • I feel like a victim.

    • Sadness

    • Confusion

    • Panic

    • I don’t know what I am feeling.

    • I am muted

What it is and its usage

This is a quick list that you can use to help yourself identify what you are feeling or thinking. Self-observation only works in the present so grab this post at the very moment you go into your self-observation and are sure what you are feeling/thinking. 

Notes

The above list is high-level, and obviously, you may miss the exact emotion or thought that you are looking for. Also, it doesn’t contain a cause-and-effect relationship. (Like, you identify that you are feeling shame, but this list doesn’t try to give further possible clues why you may be feeling it.)

The above list is intentionally not bolded and written with not too high a font size because you may need to grab it in public and not want others to see what you are doing.  

My consciousness and me

My consciousness is me in fact. If I have this image that there is my consciousness and there is me, then I am separating myself from consciousness. What a trick. ‘Me’, trying to convince myself that I need to get there. 

When I realize that my emotions, thoughts, body, and ‘constructs’ are also part of me then I can start to stop this crazy fight. 

This has something to do with letting go. Or with forgiveness. Or with love.

I can acknowledge that my thoughts, emotions, body, etc. are also part of me. I don’t have to feel disgusted about them and try to get rid of them, or be angry at them, or feel ashamed of them. They are part of me. And maybe those parts of me are suffering. It can be a better idea to see them and acknowledge them – and through this acknowledgment help them to run their course.

I can feel consciousness any time

It is this inner feeling or image that is described many times as a presence, a gentle energy field, as God, as space, as some subtle joy that is in us and around us.

It is not that hard to feel it. It is my emotions, thoughts, and other ‘constructs’ that occupy my attention and sometimes I forget that this consciousness is always there.