How do you quit smoking when you have anxiety? There are 4 tips that you can do to beat the anxiety and stay quit.
Make sure you read to the end because I’m going to give the real secret to solving anxiety that very few people have ever figured out.
Every time you quit does anxiety drive you back to smoking? Do you fail at quitting because of anxiety? Do you finally want to know how to get past anxiety and stay quit? If that’s you, you’ll want to make sure you stay to the end because I’m also going to give you 4 practical things that you can do to get past the anxiety, and I’m going to tell you the secret to beating anxiety for the rest of your life!
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I want you to know something else. This is really important. If you have other tips or tricks that have helped you deal with anxiety post them in the comments section below. Let other people benefit from your experience.
If you just have questions put those in the comments section as well. We answer all questions. That is the whole point of the comment section.
Now, let’s hop right into the content.
So, the very 1st thing is we need to talk a little bit about what anxiety is. Anxiety is a feeling of unease such as worry or fear. It can even be as bad as impending doom.
It can be mild, or it can be severe. Anxiety actually exists on a continuum.
One of the issues that people have with anxiety is they often think or frame it as if it’s an on or off switch.
It’s not.
Here’s the thing. Everybody has anxiety. Everyone. Even those people you look at, and you think yourself they don’t have anxiety. They do.
You see anxiety exists on a continuum, 0-10, 10 being you’re having so much anxiety that you have a nervous breakdown and 0 being you’re dead. If you do not have anxiety in your life or stress you’re likely not alive.
Everybody has it. It’s not about being a 0. Here’s what it’s about, and this is so important to understand.
If your anxiety is so high that causes you problems, or causes you to fail at quitting smoking, this anxiety is really not something you turn off. It is something you drive down to a lower number.
For example, you will notice that sometimes on the anxiety scale you may feel like a 2 or a 3 and feel fairly relaxed but other times you feel like an 8, 9, or a 10.
What you’ll notice is if you are someone that deals with anxiety or general anxiety disorder you spend more time at the upper end of the scale, and other people you know spend more time at the lower end of the scale
It’s not that they don’t have anxiety. They just have better coping mechanisms to keep their anxiety on the lower end.
That’s good news. What that means is you can be taught how to drive your anxiety down.
So, what’s my point here? The 1st thing is that anxiety is normal. Everybody has it. It’s natural. Anxiety exists on a continuum. These next 2 points are really important to remember.
- Keep in mind, even though I’m going to give you tips and tricks on how to drive your anxiety down and help you quit smoking, this alone is not likely to get you to quit smoking. Ninety-three percent of people that quit for life use the aid of a paid program.
- It’s also not going to solve all of your anxiety problems if you have anxiety or stress. It’s not designed to do that. This post is not a comprehensive program.
If you want a comprehensive program for either quitting smoking or anxiety you can go to my website and look into my actual programs to do that. That’s not what this post is about.
We now know what anxiety is and what it feels like, but here’s the other thing that’s important to understand.
It’s not the same as stress.
I know the people that have anxiety also often have stress, but they’re actually different things. They’re 2 separate things! Here’s why this is important.
The 1st thing you need to understand is that stress is something that happens to you – a stressful job, a stressful boss, somebody stressing you, but anxiety is internal.
Anxiety is something that you do to yourself. It’s that crazy making, that spiral that we go down where we start to go, “What if this? Well, what if that?”
I call it “what-if-ing yourself into a tizzy”.
You start going down that what-if road, and you do to yourself.
So, stress is something that happens to you. It’s external, and anxiety you do to yourself.
The reason why that’s so important is because the tools you use to deal with these are different. It is why if you go on my website I separate my stress program from my anxiety program. I’ve got to teach you different skills for each issue.
The other advantage to separating it out is while everybody has stress just as everyone has anxiety you may only need help dealing with stress, or you may just need help dealing with anxiety.
You may need help dealing with both, but if you only need 1 then you only have to do 1 course. Not everyone has both, and the tools to deal with each issue are different. That’s why I separate it out.
That’s the thing that was really important to understand.
You now know anxiety is internal and something you do to yourself. So, what can you do about it?
These are 4 things that relate specifically to smoking and anxiety that you can do to help drive yourself down that anxiety continuum to make sure you get through it.
Tip #1. Get enough sleep. We know from neuroscience that people who sleep well and get enough sleep have less anxiety. It makes it easier to quit if you are well rested.
Now, some people struggle with insomnia or restless sleeping after quitting. If you are one of those people you may want to check out my YouTube video on this. Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/db5CUMkvFyw
Tip #2. Stay active and exercise. Here is why this is especially true for people with anxiety. What happens with anxiety is when you get anxious you literally become tunnel-visioned and your perspective shrinks. When your perspective shrinks you close down. You hunch over. You stop moving.
If you actually get up when you’re feeling anxious, and you go outside and move or exercise it changes things.
When you do something with your body you move the energy. The anxiety is likely to dissipate.
It’s why we often say what you resist persists. Emotion is just energy in motion.
However anxious you are if you try to resist it, and you don’t move your body, you just sit in the couch or just curl up into a ball that uses the same amount of energy or more. It uses more energy to resist your anxious feelings.
It’s much better to just move your body because emotion or anxiety are just energy in motion. What you resist persists. Don’t resist! Move your body. Turn music on and dance.
You don’t have to necessarily deal with the anxiety head-on, but you can deal with the energy.
Tip #2. Stay active. Exercise! Get up and move your body. Dance! Just do something.
Tip #3. Eat healthy. There is a direct correlation between the quality of food you eat and your ability to deal with your anxiety. We know that from neuroscience. So, eat healthy.
What that means is cut down on anything like sugar or carbohydrates for feeding yourself.
We often do this for emotional reasons. We overeat to stuff our emotions down, and we don’t eat healthy.
That’s not going to help you. It’s going to make you more anxious because guess what! Now you’re worried about getting overweight too.
So, eat a healthy diet and eat better.
Tip #4. Quit stimulants. It’s probably why you’re reading this. If so, way to go! You’re doing the right thing. Smoking doesn’t help you feel lessanxiety or less stress. It helps yoube more anxious, and have more stress. So,quit stimulantslike alcohol, caffeine, and smoking.
Cut out as much as you possibly can. That will help you with your anxiety, and help you stay quit.
Now, those are the 4 tips.
- Get enough sleep.
- Stay active and exercise.
- Move your body.
- Eat a healthy diet and cut down on your stimulants.
These stimulants include smoking.
Why?
It’s because smoking is a heart stimulant. It causes your heart to beat 6 times more per minute on average.
Remember, I told you I was going to tell you what the real secret was to learning how to deal with your anxiety because all of these tips I’m giving you are going to help you, but these are just coping mechanisms.
You can actually deal with your anxiety and your relationship to it. Here’s how.
The real secret is learning how to re-code your brain. You can re-code your brain specifically about how you internalize your anxiety because anxiety is something that you do to yourself.
That means it’s internalized. It’s in your own head.
That’s good news!!
It means you can literally learn to re-code your brain, and it can be done easily. Control over anxiety is what we’re talking about. Here’s what re-coding your brain does.
When I say “re-coding your brain” what do I really mean?
What I mean is getting control over anxiety before anxiety is controlling you, and guess what. There’s great news. There are many ways to re-code your brain.
We know about many of these in neuroscience. I’ll give you an example.
In my program Beating Anxiety for Life we teach several core methods that you’ll find in other programs. One is called the representational method. There’s tapping and self-hypnosis. You can google all of these.
All of these things help you re-code your unconscious mind.
Just going out and buying a book on how to deal with anxiety is not going to re-code your mind. That’s all just for your conscious thoughts. It may make your conscious mind feel better, but it is not going to rewire your brain in any way, shape, or form.
The best advice I can give you is if you’re suffering from general anxiety disorder, and it’s getting in your way of quitting what you need to do is consider professional help. Get the aid of a program that helps you actually recode your unconscious mind and anxiety.
Please, by all means, you can check out my program on my website. Click Here.
Let’s just summarize this.
Stress and anxiety are natural and authentic. Anxiety and stress happen to all of us, and remember, they’re 2 different things. Stress happens to you, and anxiety you do to yourself.
When we quit smoking it actually brings on stress and anxiety. It’s not really a shocker that this may come up for you and get your way of quitting. The good news is you can learn to deal with it to make sure that you can actually quit for life.
I gave you the 4 tips to do this.
- Get enough sleep.
- Stay active and exercise.
- Eat a healthy diet.
- Quit stimulants like alcohol and caffeine, or at least cut down on them.
The real secret to dealing with anxiety and learning how to change your life forever is re-coding your brain and how your brain has created encoded anxiety.
That “what-if” thing that you’ve coded into your brain, “Well, what if this? Well, what if that?” that starts the downward spiral that you can’t seem to get out of is hard wired into you, but you can change that wiring.
Your brain has this thing called “neuroplasticity”. That means it’s capable of re-wiring itself and changing.
That’s the secret!
You can literally re-wire your brain especially in regards to anxiety.
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If you have used other tips or tricks put those in the comments section. Allow others to benefit from your experience. If you just have questions and you want more information put that question in the comments section too.
That’s the whole purpose of the comment section!
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I want to just thank you very much for taking the time to read this post.
Blessings to everyone! I’ll talk to you soon.